THE 

LIVING PRESENT 



GERTRUDE 

ATHERTON 




Copiglit^ - 



, ^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE LIVING PRESENT 



BY MRS. ATHERTON 



HISTORICAL 

THE CONQUEROR 

CALIFORNIA: An Intimate History 
FICTION 
California 

BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME, Containing " Rez&nov" 
(1806) and "The Doomswoman" (1840) 

THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES (1800-46) 

A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE (The Sixties) 

AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS (The 
Eighties) 

THE CALIFORNIANS (The Eighties) 

A WHIRL ASUNDER (The Nineties) 

ANCESTORS (Present) 

THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS: A Book for Boys (1840) 
In Other Parts of the World 

MRS. BALFAME 

PERCH OF THE DEVIL (Montana) 

TOWER OF IVORY (Munich) 

JULIA FRANCE AND HER TIMES (B. W. I. and Eng- 
land) 

RULERS OF KINGS (Austria, Hungary and the Adiron- 
dacks) 

THE TRAVELLING THIRDS (Spain) 

THE GORGEOUS ISLE (Nevis, B. W. I.) 

SENATOR NORTH (Washington) 

PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES (Monterey, 
California, and New York) 

THE ARISTOCRATS (The Adiron dacks) 

THE BELL IN THE FOG: Short Stories of Various 
Climes and Phases 




THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNE 

President Le Bien — Etre du Blesse 



1 THE 

LIVING PRESENT 



BY 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON * 
ii 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

Lj. 

X 



2«3?R? 



\rVlff 



e,o\ 



Copyright, 1917, by 
Gertrude Atherton v 



All rights reserved, including that of translation 
into foreign languages. 



/ 

JUL -91917 

©CI A 4 70188 t 



TO 

"ETERNAL FRANCE" 



CONTENTS 

BOOK I 
FRENCH WOMEN IN WAR TIME 

CHAPTER pAGE 

I Madame Balli and the "Comfort Paceage" . i 

II The Silent Army 24 

III The Munition Makers 34 

IV Mademoiselle Javal and the Eclopes ... 45 
V The Woman's Opportunity 64 

VI Madame Pierre Goujon 73 

VII Madame Pierre Goujon (Continued) .... 91 

VIII Valentine Thompson 99 

IX Madame Waddington 119 

X The Countess D'Haussonvtlle 133 

XI The Marquise D'Andigne ^2 

XII Madame Camille Lyon 155 

XIII Brief Accounts of Great Work: TheDuchesse 

D'Uzes; The Duchesse De Rohan; Countess 
Greifulhe; Madame Paquin; Madame Paul 

DuPuy 162 

XIV One of the Motherless 171 

XV The Marraines 183 

XVI Problems for the Future 186 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

BOOK II 
FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Threat of the Matriarchate .... 205 

II The Triumph of Middle-Age 231 

III The Real Victims of "Society" 260 

IV One Solution of a Great Problem . . . . 278 
V Four of the Highly Specialized : Maria De B ar- 

ril; Alice Berta Josephine Kauser; Belle Da 
Costa Greene; Honore Willsie .... 286 
Addendum 301 



1 

j 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Marquise d'Andigne, President Le Bien — Etre du 
Blesse Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



Madame Balli, President Reconfort du Soldat .... 4 

Delivering the Milk in Rheims 26 

Making the Shells 38 

Societe L'Eclairage Electrique, Usine de Lyon .... 42 

Where the Artists Dine for Fifty Centimes 64 

A Railway Depot Cantine 13° 

Delivering the Post 186 



BOOK I 
FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME 



IF this little book reads more like a memoir than a 
systematic study of conditions, my excuse is that I 
remained too long in France and was too much with 
the people whose work most interested me, to be capa- 
ble, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a de- 
tached statistical account of their remarkable work. 

In the first place, although it was my friend Owen 
Johnson who suggested this visit to France and per- 
sonal investigation of the work of her women, I went 
with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I remained 
the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going 
was not to gratify my curiosity but to do what I could 
for the cause of France as well as for my own coun- 
try by studying specifically the war-time work of its 
women and to make them better known to the women 
of America. 

The average American woman who never has trav- 
eled in Europe, or only as a flitting tourist, is firm in 
the belief that all Frenchwomen are permanently occu- 
pied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to 
eradicate this impression, at least the new impression 
I hope to create by a recital at first hand of what a 
number of Frenchwomen (who are merely carefully 
selected types) are doing for their country in its pres- 
ent ordeal, should be all the deeper. 

American women were not in the least astonished 
at the daily accounts which reached them through the 
medium of press and magazine of the magnificent war 

xi 



services of the British women. That was no more 
than was to have been expected. Were they not, then, 
Anglo-Saxons, of our own blood, still closer to the 
fountain-source of a nation that has, with whatever 
reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with a 
grim, stolid, capable tenacity that means the inevitable 
defeat of any nation so incredibly stupid as to defy 
her? 

If word had come over that the British women 
were quite indifferent to the war, were idle and friv- 
olous and insensible to the clarion voice of their in- 
domitable country's needs, that, if you like, would 
have made a sensation. But knowing the race as they 
did — and it is the only race of which the genuine 
American does know anything — he, or she, accepted 
the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave 
and easily expert women without comment, although, 
no doubt, with a glow of vicarious pride. 

But quite otherwise with the women of France. In 
the first place there was little interest. They were, 
after all, foreigners. Your honest dyed-in-the-wool 
American has about the same contemptuous tolerance 
for foreigners that foreigners have for him. They 
are not Americans (even after they immigrate and 
become naturalized), they do not speak the same lan- 
guage in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps 
a brogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal 
rhythms and to the rich divergencies from the normal 
standards of their own tongue that distinguish differ- 
ent sections of this vast United States of America. 

But the American mind is, after all, an open mind. 
xii 



Such generalities as, "The Frenchwomen are quite 
wonderful," "are doing marvelous things for their 
country during this war," that floated across the ex- 
pensive cable now and again, made little or no impres- 
sion on any but those who already knew their France 
and could be surprised at no resource or energy she 
might display; but Owen Johnson and several other 
men with whom he talked, including that ardent 
friend of France, Whitney Warren, felt positive that 
if some American woman writer with a public, and 
who was capable through long practice in story writ- 
ing, of selecting and composing facts in conformance 
with the economic and dramatic laws of fiction, would 
go over and study the work of the Frenchwomen at 
first hand, and, discarding generalities, present specific 
instances of their work and their attitude, the result 
could not fail to give the intelligent American woman 
a different opinion of her French sister and enlist her 
sympathy. 

I had been ill or I should have gone to England 
soon after the outbreak of the war and worked with 
my friends, for I have always looked upon England 
as my second home, and I have as many friends there 
as here. If it had not been for Mr. Johnson and Mr. 
Warren, no doubt I should have gone to England 
within the next two or three months. But their rep- 
resentations aroused my enthusiasm and I determined 
to go to France first, at all events. 

My original intention was to remain in France for 
a month, gathering my material as quickly as possible, 
and then cross to England. It seemed to me that if 

xiii 



I wrote a book that might be of some service to France 
I should do the same thing for a country to which I 
was not only far more deeply attached but far more 
deeply indebted. 

I remained three months and a third in France — 
from May 9th, 19 16, to August 19th — and I did not 
go to England for two reasons. I found that it was 
more of an ordeal to get to London from Paris than 
to return to New York and sail again; and I heard 
that Mrs. Ward was writing a book about the women 
of England. For me to write another would be what 
is somewhat gracelessly called a work of supereroga- 
tion. 

I remained in France so long because I was never 
so vitally interested in my life. I could not tear my- 
self away, although I found it impossible to put my 
material into shape there. Not only was I on the go 
all day long, seeing this and that ceuvre, having per- 
sonal interviews with heads of important organiza- 
tions, taken about by the kind and interested friends 
my own interest made for me, but when night came I 
was too tired to do more than enter all the informa- 
tion I had accumulated during the day in a notebook, 
and then go to bed. I have seldom taken notes, but I 
was determined that whatever else my book might 
be it should at least be accurate, and I also collected 
all the literature (leaflets, pamphlets, etc.) of the 
various ceuvres (as all these war relief organizations 
are called) and packed them into carefully super- 
scribed large brown envelopes with a meticulousness 
that is, alas, quite foreign to my native disposition. 

xiv 



When, by the way, I opened my trunk to pack it 
and saw those dozen or more large square brown en- 
velopes I was appalled. They looked so important, so 
sinister, they seemed to mutter of State secrets, war 
maps, spy data. I knew that trunks were often 
searched at Bordeaux, and I knew that if mine were 
those envelopes never would leave France. I should 
be fortunate to sail away myself. 

But I must have my notes. To remember all that 
I had from day to day gathered was an impossibility. 
I have too good a memory not to distrust it when it 
comes to a mass of rapidly accumulated information; 
combined with imagination and enthusiasm it is sure 
to play tricks. 

But I had an inspiration. The Ministry of War 
had been exceedingly kind to me. Convinced that I 
was a "Friend of France/' they had permitted me to 
go three times into the War Zone, the last time send- 
ing me in a military automobile and providing an 
escort. I had been over to the War Office very often 
and had made friends of several of the politest men 
on earth. 

I went out and bought the largest envelope to be 
found in Paris. Into this I packed all those other big 
brown envelopes and drove over to the Ministere de la 
Guerre. I explained my predicament. Would they 
seal it with the formidable seal of the War Office and 
write Propagande across it? Of course if they wished 
I would leave my garnerings for a systematic search. 
They merely laughed at this unusual evidence on my 
part of humble patience and submission. The French 

xv 



are the acutest people in the world. By this time these 
preternaturally keen men in the War Office knew me 
better than I knew myself. If I had, however uncon- 
sciously and in my deepest recesses, harbored a treach- 
erous impulse toward the country I so professed to 
admire and to desire to serve, or if my ego had been 
capable of sudden tricks and perversions, they would 
long since have had these lamentable deformities, my 
spiritual hare-lip, ticketed and docketed with the rest 
of my dossier. 

As it was they complied with my request at once, 
gave me their blessing, and escorted me to the head 
of the stair — no elevators in this great Ministere de 
la Guerre and the Service de Sante is at the top of 
the building. I went away quite happy, more devoted 
to their cause than ever, and easy in my mind about 
Bordeaux — where, by the way, my trunks were not 
opened. 

Therefore, that remarkable experience in France 
is altogether still so vivid to me that to write about 
it reportorially, with the personal equation left out, 
would be quite as impossible as it is for me to refrain 
from execrating the Germans. When I add that dur- 
ing that visit I grew to love the French people (whom, 
in spite of many visits to France, I merely had ad- 
mired coolly and impersonally) as much as I abom- 
inate the enemies of the human race, I feel that the 
last word has been said, and that my apology for 
writing what may read like a memoir, a chronicle of 
personal reminiscences, will be understood and for- 
given. G. A. 

xvi 



THE LIVING PRESENT 



MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT 
PACKAGE" 



ONE of the most striking results of the Great 
War has been the quickening in thousands of 
European women of qualities so long dormant that 
they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in 
a more general article, the Frenchwomen of the mid- 
dle and lower bourgeoisie and of the farms stepped 
automatically into the shoes of the men called to the 
colors in August, 19 14, and it was, in their case, 
merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of 
one, and both of equal fit. The women of those clear- 
ly defined classes are their husbands' partners and co- 
workers, and although physically they may find it 
more wearing to do the work of two than of one, it 
entails no particular strain on their mental faculties 
or change in their habits of life. Moreover, France 
since the dawn of her history has been a military na- 
tion, and generation after generation her women have 

1 



2 THE LIVING PRESENT 

been called upon to play their important role in war, 
although never on so vast a scale as now. 

Contrary to the prevailing estimate of the French — 
an estimate formed mainly from sensational novels 
and plays, or during brief visits to the shops and 
boulevards of Paris — the French are a stolid, stoical, 
practical race, abnormally acute, without illusions, and 
whose famous ebullience is all in the top stratum. 
There is even a certain melancholy at the root of their 
temperament, for, gay and pleasure loving as they are 
on the surface, they are a very ancient and a very wise 
people. Impatient and impulsive, they are capable of 
a patience and tenacity, a deep deliberation and cau- 
tion, which, combined with an unparalleled mental 
alertness, brilliancy without recklessness, bravery 
without bravado, spiritual exaltation without senti- 
mentality (which is merely perverted animalism), a 
curious sensitiveness of mind and body due to over- 
breeding, and a white flame of patriotism as steady 
and dazzling as an arc-light, has given them a glor- 
ious history, and makes them, by universal consent, 
preeminent among the warring nations to-day. 

They are intensely conservative and their mental 
suppleness is quite as remarkable. Economy is one 
of the motive powers of their existence, the solid 
pillars upon which their wealth and power are built; 
and yet Paris has been not only the home and the 
patron of the arts for centuries, but the arbiter of 
fashion for women, a byword for extravagance, and 
a forcing-house for a thousand varieties of pleasure. 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 3 

No race is so paradoxical, but then France is the 
genius among nations. Antiquity, and many invasions 
of her soil have given her an inviolable solidity, and 
the temperamental gaiety and keen intelligence which 
pervades all classes have kept her eternally young. 
She is as far from decadence as the crudest com- 
munity in the United States of America. 

To the student of French history and character 
nothing the French have done in this war is surpris- 
ing; nevertheless it seemed to me that I had a fresh 
revelation every day during my sojourn in France in 
the summer of 1916. Every woman of every class 
(with a few notable exceptions seen for the most 
part in the Ritz Hotel) was working at something or 
other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or to 
supplement the efforts and expenditures of the Gov- 
ernment (two billion francs a month) ; and it seemed 
that I never should see the last of those relief organ- 
izations of infinite variety known as "ceuvres." 

Some of this work is positively creative, much is 
original, and all is practical and indispensable. As 
the most interesting of it centers in and radiates from 
certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to 
meet and to know as well as their days and mine 
would permit, it has seemed to me that the surest w T ay 
of vivifying any account of the work itself is to make 
its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will 
begin with Madame Balli. 



4 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ii 

To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in 
Smyrna, of Greek blood ; but Paris can show no purer 
type of Parisian, and she has never willingly passed 
a day out of France. During her. childhood her 
brother (who must have been many years older than 
herself) was sent to Paris as Minister from Greece, 
filling the post for thirty years; and his mother fol- 
lowed with her family. Madame Balli not only was 
brought up in France, but has spent only five hours 
of her life in Greece; after her marriage she ex- 
pressed a wish to see the land of her ancestors, and 
her husband — who was an Anglo-Greek — amiably 
took her to a hotel while the steamer on which they 
were journeying to Constantinople was detained in 
the harbor of Athens. 

Up to the outbreak of the war she was a woman 
of the world, a woman of fashion to her finger-tips, 
a reigning beauty always dressed with a costly and 
exquisite simplicity. Some idea of the personal love- 
liness which, united to her intelligence and charm, 
made her one of the conspicuous figures of the cap- 
ital, may be inferred from the fact that her British 
husband, an art connoisseur and notable, collector, was 
currently reported deliberately to have picked out the 
most beautiful girl in Europe to adorn his various 
mansions. 

Madame Balli has black eyes and hair, a white skin, 
a classic profile, and a smile of singular sweetness and 




MADAME BALLI 

President Reconfort du Soldat 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 5 

charm. Until the war came she was far too absorbed 
in the delights of the world — the Paris world, which 
has more votaries than all the capitals of all the world 
— the changing fashions and her social popularity, to 
have heard so much as a murmur of the serious tides 
of her nature. Although no one disputed her intelli- 
gence — a social asset in France, odd as that may ap- 
pear to Americans — she was generally put down as a 
mere femme du monde, self-indulgent, pleasure-lov- 
ing, dependent — what our more strident feminists call 
parasitic. It is doubtful if she belonged to charitable 
organizations, although, generous by nature, it is safe 
to say that she gave freely. 

In that terrible September week of 191 4 when the 
Germans were driving like a hurricane on Paris and 
its inhabitants were fleeing in droves to the South, 
Madame Balli's husband was in England; her sister- 
in-law, an infirmiere major (nurse major) of the 
First Division of the Red Cross, had been ordered 
to the front the day war broke out; a brother-in-law 
had his hands full ; and Madame Balli was practically 
alone in Paris. Terrified of the struggling hordes 
about the railway stations even more than of the ad- 
vancing Germans, deprived of her motor cars, which 
had been commandeered by the Government, she did 
not know which way to turn or even how to get into 
communication with her one possible protector. 

But her brother-in-law suddenly bethought himself 
of this too lovely creature who would be exposed to 
the final horrors of recrudescent barbarism if the Ger- 



6 THE LIVING PRESENT 

mans entered Paris; he determined to put public de- 
mands aside for the moment and take her to Dinard, 
whence she could, if necessary, cross to England. 

He called her on the telephone and told her to be 
ready at a certain hour that afternoon, and with as 
little luggage as possible, as they must travel by auto- 
mobile. "And mark you," he added, "no dogs!" 
Madame Balli had seven little Pekinese to which she 
was devoted (her only child was at school in Eng- 
land). She protested bitterly at leaving her pets be- 
hind, but her brother was inexorable, and when he 
called for her it was with the understanding that all 
seven were yelping in the rear, at the mercy of the 
concierge. 

There were seven passengers in the automobile, 
however, of which the anxious driver, feeling his way 
through the crowded streets and apprehensive that 
his car might be impressed at any moment, had not a 
suspicion. They were in hat boxes, hastily perforated 
portmanteaux, up the coat sleeves of Madame Balli 
and her maid, and they did not begin to yelp until so 
far on the road to the north that it was not worth 
while to throw them out. 



in 

At Dinard, where wounded soldiers were brought 
in on every train, Madame Balli was turned over to 
friends, and in a day or two, being bored and lonely, 
she concluded to go with these friends to the hospitals 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 7 

and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. 
From that day until I left Paris on the seventeenth 
of August, 19 16, Madame Balli had labored unceas- 
ingly; she is known to the Government as one of its 
most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works 
until two in the morning, during the quieter hours, 
with her correspondence and books (the police de- 
scend at frequent and irregular intervals to examine 
the books of all ceuvres, and one mistake means being 
haled to court), and she had not up to that time taken 
a day's rest. I have seen her so tired she could hardly 
go on, and she said once quite pathetically, "I am not 
even well-groomed any more." I frequently straight- 
ened her dress in the back, for her maids work almost 
as hard as she does. When her husband died, a year 
after the war broke out, and she found herself no 
longer a rich woman, her maids offered to stay with 
her on reduced wages and work for her ceuvres, being 
so deeply attached to her that they would have re- 
mained for no wages at all if she had really been 
poor. I used to beg her to go to Vichy for a fort- 
night, but she would not hear of it. Certain things 
depended upon her alone, and she must remain at her 
post unless she broke down utterly.* 

One of her friends said to me : "Helene must really 
be a tremendously strong woman. Before the war we 
all thought her a semi-invalid who pulled herself to- 
gether at night for the opera, or dinners, or balls. 

*She is still hard at work, June, 19 17. 



8 THE LIVING PRESENT 

But we didn't know her then, and sometimes we feel 
as if we knew her still less now." 

It was Madame Balli who invented the "comfort 
package" which other organizations have since devel- 
oped into the "comfort bag," and founded the ceuvre 
known as "Reconfort du Soldat" Her committee 
consists of Mrs. Frederick H. Allen of New York, 
who has a home in Paris and is identified with many 
war charities; Mrs. Edward Tuck, who has lived in 
and given munificently to France for thirty years; 
Madame Paul Dupuy, who was Helen Brown of New 
York and has her own ceuvre for supplying war- 
surgeons with rubber, oil-cloth, invalid chairs, etc. ; 
the Marquise de Noialles, President of a large ceuvre 
somewhat similar to Madame Dupuy's; the Comtesse 
de Fels, Madame Brun, and Mr. Holman-Black, an 
American who has lived the greater part of his life in 
France. Mrs. Willard sends her supplies from New 
York by every steamer. 

Madame Balli also has a long list of contributors 
to this and her other ceuvres, who sometimes pay their 
promised dues and sometimes do not, so that she is 
obliged to call on her committee (who have a hundred 
other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own 
pocket. A certain number of American contributors 
send her things regularly through Mrs. Allen or Mrs. 
Willard, and occasionally some generous outsider 
gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Col- 
ony in Paris had been most generous ; and while I was 
there she published in one of the newspapers an appeal 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 9 

for a hundred pillows for a hospital in which she was 
interested, and received in the course of the next three 
days over four hundred. 



IV 

I went with her one day to one of the eclope sta- 
tions and to the Depot des Isoles, outside of Paris, to 
help her distribute comfort packages — which, by the 
way, covered the top of the automobile and were piled 
so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some 
difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of 
varying sizes, were in the nature of surprise bags of 
an extremely practical order. Tobacco, pipes, cigar- 
ettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap, pocket-knives, 
combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread, 
buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few 
of the articles I recall. The members of the Com- 
mittee meet at her house twice a week to do up the 
bundles, and her servants, also, do a great deal of the 
practical work. 

It was a long drive through Paris and to the depots 
beyond. A year before we should have been held up 
at the point of the bayonet every few yards, but in 
1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in 
the War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications 
we saw men standing beside the upward pointing 
guns, and I was told that this vigilance does not relax 
day or night. 

Later, I shall have much to say about the eclopes, 



io THE LIVING PRESENT 

but it is enough to explain here that "eclope," in the 
new adaptation of the word, stands for a man who is 
not wounded, or ill enough for a military hospital, but 
for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters is im- 
perative. The stations provided for them, principally 
through the instrumentality of another remarkable 
Frenchwoman, Mile. Javal, now number about one 
hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines or 
in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. 
The one we visited, Le Bourget, is among the largest 
and most important, and the Commandant, M. de 
L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his children. 
The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some 
about to march out and entrain for the front, others 
still loafing, and M. de L'Horme seemed to know each 
by name. 

The comfort packages are always given to the men 
returning to their regiments on that particular day. 
They are piled high on a long table at one side of the 
barrack yard, and behind it on the day of my visit 
stood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black 
and myself, and we handed out packages with a 
"Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Some were sul- 
len and unresponsive, but many more looked as 
pleased as children and no doubt were as excited over 
their "grabs," which they were not to open until in 
the train. They would face death on the morrow, 
but for the moment at least they were personal and 
titillated. 

Close by was a small munition factory, and a large 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" n 

loft had been turned into a rest-room for such of the 
eclopes as it was thought advisable to put to bed for 
a few days under medical supervision. To each of 
these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to 
the tobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of 
soap, three picture post-cards, and chocolate. I think 
they were as glad of the visits as of the presents, for 
most of them were too far from home to receive any 
personal attention from family or friends. The beds 
looked comfortable and all the windows were open. 

From there we went to the Depot des Isoles, an 
immense enclosure where men from shattered regi- 
ments are sent for a day or two until they can be 
returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments. 
Nowhere, not even in the War Zone, did war show to 
me a grimmer face than here. As these men are in 
good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours, little 
is done for their comfort. Soldiers in good condition 
are not encouraged to expect comforts in war time, 
and no doubt the discipline is good for them — al- 
though, heaven knows, the French as a race know 
little about comfort at any time. 

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there 
were also large spaces covered with straw, and here 
men had flung themselves down as they entered, with- 
out unstrapping the heavy loads they carried on their 
backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was 
occupied by a sprawling figure in his stained, faded, 
muddy uniform. I saw one superb and turbaned Al- 
gerian sitting upright in an attitude of extreme dig- 



12 THE LIVING PRESENT 

nity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as 
a dead man in the trenches. 

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a 
cantine at this depot. Women have these cantines in 
all the eclope and isole stations where permission of the 
War Office can be obtained, and not only give freely 
of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to 
those weary men as they come in, but also have made 
their little sheds look gaily hospitable with flags and 
pictures. The Miss Gracies had even induced some 
one to build an open air theater in the great barrack 
yard where the men could amuse themselves and one 
another if they felt inclined. A more practical gift 
by Mrs. Allen was a bath house in which were six 
showers and soap and towels. 

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing 
out gifts, and when I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole 
wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking doughnuts, 
brought by a woman of the village close by, I won- 
dered with some apprehension if she were meaning to 
reward us for our excessive virtue. But they were 
an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in the 
yard — some already lined up to march — and the way 
they disappeared down those brown throats made me 
feel blasee and over-civilized. 

I did not hand out during this little fete, my place 
being taken by Mrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better 
able to appreciate the picture. All the women were 
pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosen 
them as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 13 

French mind as for their willingness to help. It was 
a strange sight, that line of charming women with 
kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed, 
stamped with the world they moved in, while standing 
and lying about were the tired and dirty poilus — even 
those that stood were slouching as if resting their backs 
while they could — with their uniforms of horizon blue 
faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched. They 
had not seen a decent woman for months, possibly 
not a woman at all, and it was no wonder they fol- 
lowed every movement of these smiling benefactresses 
with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes. 

But, I repeat, to me it was an ill-favored scene, and 
the fact that it was a warm and peaceful day, with a 
radiant blue sky above, merely added to the irony. 
Although later I visited the War Zone three times and 
saw towns crowded with soldiers off duty, or as empty 
as old gray shells, nothing induced in me the same 
vicious stab of hatred for war as this scene. There 
is only one thing more abominable than war and that 
is the pacificist doctrine of non-resistance when duty 
and honor call. Every country, no doubt, has its 
putrescent spots caused by premature senility, but no 
country so far has shown itself as wholly crumbling 
in an age where the world is still young. 



A few days later I went with Madame Balli and 
Mr. Holman-Black to the military hospital, Chaptal, 



14 THE LIVING PRESENT 

devoted to the men whose faces had been mutilated. 
The first room was an immense apartment with an 
open space beyond the beds rilled to-day with men 
who crowded about Madame Balli, as much to get 
that personal word and smile from her, which the 
French soldier so pathetically places above all gifts, 
as to have the first choice of a pipe or knife. 

After I had distributed the usual little presents of 
cigarettes, chocolate, soap, and post-cards among the 
few still in bed, I sat on the outside of Madame Balli's 
mob and talked to one of the infirmieres. She was a 
Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who was serv- 
ing in the British navy, and her sons were in the 
trenches. She made a remark to me that I was des- 
tined to hear very often: 

"Oh, yes, we work hard, and we are only too glad 
to do what we can for France; but, my God! what 
would become of us if we remained idle and let our 
minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should 
go mad. As it is, we are so tired at night that we 
sleep, and the moment we awaken we are on duty 
again. I can assure you the harder we have to work 
the more grateful we are." 

She looked very young and pretty in her infirmiere 
uniform of white linen with a veil of the same stiff 
material and the red cross on her breast, and it was 
odd to hear that sons of hers were in the trenches. 

After that nearly all the men in the different wards 
we visited were in bed, and each room was worse than 
the last, until it was almost a relief to come to the one 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 15 

where the men had just been operated on and were so 
bandaged that any features they may have had left 
were indistinguishable. 

For the uncovered faces were horrible. I was ill 
all night, not only from the memory of the sickening 
sights with which I had remained several hours in a 
certain intimacy — for I went to assist Madame Balli 
and took the little gifts to every bedside — but from 
rage against the devilish powers that unloosed this 
horror upon the world. One of the grim ironies of 
this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are 
so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted 
with awful visions like those that visited the more 
plastic conscience of Charles IX after St. Bartholo- 
mew ; but at least it will be some compensation to pic- 
ture them rending the air with lamentations over their 
own downfall and hurling curses at their childish folly. 

It is the bursting of shrapnel that causes the face 
mutilations, and although the first room we visited at 
Chaptal was a witness to the marvelous restorative 
work the surgeons are able to accomplish — sometimes 
— many weeks and even months must elapse while the 
face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the 
mouth almost parallel with the nose — and often there 
is no nose — a whole cheek missing, an eye gone, or 
both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin have been 
blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on 
its flat surface but a pipe inserted where the nose had 
been. Another was so terrible that I did not dare to 
take a second look, and I have only a vague and 



16 THE LIVING PRESENT 

mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never 
before seen in this world. 

On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, 
with one entire side of his face bandaged, his mouth 
twisted almost into his right ear, and a mere remnant 
of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye 
and apparently quite happy. 

The infirmiere told me that sometimes the poor fel- 
lows would cry — they are almost all very young — and 
lament that no girl would have them now; but she 
always consoled them by the assurance that men would 
be so scarce after the war that girls would take any- 
thing they could get. 

In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting 
on the edge of his cot, receiving his family, two wom- 
en of middle age and a girl of about seventeen. His 
face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, 
but the lower part was uninjured. He may or may 
not have been permanently blind. The two older 
women — his mother and aunt, no doubt — looked 
stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl 
sat staring straight before her with an expression of 
bitter resentment I shall never forget. She looked as 
if she were giving up every youthful illusion, and 
realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more par- 
ticularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in 
the trenches. Or perhaps this mutilated boy beside her 
was the first lover of her youth. One feels far too im- 
personal for curiosity in these hospitals and it did not 
occur to me to ask. 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 17 

Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of 
delicacies for the private kitchen of the infirmieres, 
where fine dishes may be concocted for appetites still 
too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare : 
soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. 
Mr. Holman-Black came staggering after us with one 
of these boxes, I remember, down the long corridor 
that led to the private quarters of the nurses. One 
walks miles in these hospitals. 

A number of American men in Paris are working 
untiringly for Paris, notably those in our War Relief 
Clearing House — H. O. Beatty, Randolph Mordecai, 
James R. Barbour, M. P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, 
Whitney Warren, Hugh R. GrifTen, James Hazen 
Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R. Scott, J. J. Hoff, 
Rev. Dr. S. N. Watson, George Munroe, Charles Car- 
roll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges — but I 
never received from any the same sense of consecra- 
tion, of absolute selflessness as I did from Mr. Hol- 
man-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little 
hotel, and for many years before the war were among 
the most brilliant contributors to the musical life of 
the great capital ; but there has been no entertaining in 
those charming rooms since August, 191 4. Mr. Hol- 
man-Black is par rain (godfather) to three hundred 
and twenty soldiers at the Front, not only providing 
them with winter and summer underclothing, bedding, 
sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighter articles they 
have the privilege of asking for, but also writing from 
fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, 



18 THE LIVING PRESENT 

has not taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of 
the war, nor read a book. He wears the uniform of 
a Red Cross officer, and is associated with several of 
Madame Balli's ceuvres. 



VI 

A few days later Madame Balli took me to another 
hospital — Hopital Militaire Villemin — where she gives 
a concert once a week. Practically all the men that 
gathered in the large room to hear the music, or 
crowded before the windows, were well and would 
leave shortly for the front, but a few were brought in 
on stretchers and lay just below the platform. This 
hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those 
I had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It 
was also an extremely cheerful afternoon, for not 
only was the sun shining, but the four artists Madame 
Balli had brought gave of their best and their efforts 
to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter. 

Lyse Berty — the most distinguished vaudeville ar- 
tist in France and who is certainly funnier than any 
woman on earth — had got herself up in horizon blue, 
and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot 
war and the horrors of war and surrendered to her 
art and her selections with an abandon which betrayed 
their superior intelligence, for she is a very plain 
woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent 
her life in Paris and looks like the pictures in some 
old Book of Beauty — immense blue eyes, tiny regular 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 19 

features, small oval face, chestnut hair, pink-and- 
white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure — was second 
in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve 
their monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, 
sweet or stirring songs in a really beautiful voice. 
The other two, young entertainers of the vaudeville 
stage, were not so accomplished but were applauded 
politely, and as they possessed a liberal share of the 
grace and charm of the Frenchwoman and were ex- 
quisitely dressed, no doubt men still recall them on 
dreary nights in trenches. 

I sat on the platform and watched at close range 
the faces of these soldiers of France. They were all 
from the people, of course, but there was not a face 
that was not alive with quick intelligence, and it struck 
me anew — as it always did when I had an oppor- 
tunity to see a large number of Frenchmen together 
at close range — how little one face resembled the 
other. The French are a race of individuals. There 
is no type. It occurred to me that if during my life- 
time the reins of all the Governments, my own in- 
cluded, were seized by the people, I should move over 
and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. 
Their lively minds and quick sympathies would make 
their rule tolerable at least. As I have said before, the 
race has genius. 

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I con- 
cluded to drive home in the car of the youngest of the 
vaudeville* artists, as taxis in that region were non- 
existent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black 



20 THE LIVING PRESENT 

would be detained for another hour. Mademoiselle 
Berty was with us, and in the midst of the rapid con- 
versation — which never slackened! — she made some 
allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed 
involuntarily : 

"You married? I never should have imagined it." 

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a 
French vaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and auto- 
mobile represented an income as incompatible with 
fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot imagine. 
Automatic Americanism, no doubt. 

Mile. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hor- 
tense is not married," she merely remarked. "But 
she has a splendid son — twelve years old." 

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I 
hastened to assure the girl that I had thought she was 
about eighteen and was astonished to hear that she 
had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to 
me with a gentle and deprecatory smile. 

"I loved very young," she explained. 



VII 



Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame 
Balli's hospitals. I believe she visits others, carrying 
gifts to both the men and the kitchens, but the only 
other of her works that I came into personal contact 
with was an ceuvre she had organized to teach con- 
valescent soldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 21 

make bead necklaces. These are really beautiful and 
are another of her own inventions. 

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in 
the Avenue Henri Martin is a table covered with 
boxes filled with glass beads of every color. Here 
Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all 
her spare hours and begins the necklaces which the 
soldiers come for and take back to the hospital to 
finish. I sat in the background and watched the men 
come in — many of them with the Croix de Guerre, 
the Croix de la Legion d'Honneur, or the Medaille 
Militaire pinned on their faded jackets. I listened to 
brief definite instructions of Madame Balli, who may 
have the sweetest smile in the world, but who knows 
what she wants people to do and invariably makes 
them do it. I saw no evidence of stupidity or slack- 
ness in these young soldiers; they might have been 
doing bead-work all their lives, they combined the 
different colors and sizes so deftly and with such true 
artistic feeling. 

Madame' Balli has sold hundreds of these neck- 
laces. She has a case at the Ritz Hotel, and she has 
constant orders from friends and their friends, and 
even from dressmakers; for these trinkets are as 
nearly works of art as anything so light may be. The 
men receive a certain percentage of the profits and 
will have an ample purse when they leave the hospital. 
Another portion goes to buy delicacies for their less 
fortunate comrades — and this idea appeals to them 
immensely — the rest goes to buy more beads at the 



22 THE LIVING PRESENT 

glittering shops on the Rue du Rivoli. The necklaces 
bring from five to eight or ten dollars. The soldiers 
in many of the hospitals are doing flat bead work, 
which is ingenious and pretty; but nothing compares 
with these necklaces of Madame Balli, and some of 
the best dressed American women in Paris are wear- 
ing them. 

VIII 

On the twentieth of July (1916) Le Figaro devoted 
an article to Madame Balli's Reconfort du Soldat, and 
stated that it was distributing about six hundred pack- 
ages a week to soldiers in hospitals and eclope depots, 
and that during the month of January alone nine thou- 
sand six hundred packages were distributed both be- 
hind the lines and among the soldiers at the Front. 
This may go on for years or it may come to an abrupt 
end ; but, like all the Frenchwomen to whom I talked, 
and who when they plunged into work expected a 
short war, she is determined to do her part as long as 
the soldiers do theirs, even if the war marches with 
the term of her natural life. She not only has given 
a great amount of practical help, but has done her 
share in keeping up the morale of the men, who, buoy- 
ant by nature as they are, and passionately devoted to 
their country, must have many discouraged moments 
in their hospitals and depots. 

Once or twice when swamped with work — she is 
also a marraine (godmother) and writes regularly to 
her filleuls — Madame Balli has sent the weekly gifts 



THE "COMFORT PACKAGE" 23 

by friends; but the protest was so decided, the men 
declaring that her personal sympathy meant more to 
them than cigarettes and soap, that she was forced to 
adjust her affairs in such a manner that no visit to a 
hospital at least should be missed. 

It is doubtful if any of these men who survive and 
live to tell tales of the Great War in their old age will 
ever omit to recall the gracious presence and lovely 
face of Madame Balli, who came so often to make 
them forget the sad monotony of their lives, even the 
pain in their mutilated limbs, the agony behind their 
disfigured faces, during those long months they spent 
in the hospitals of Paris. And although her beauty 
has always been a pleasure to the eye, perhaps it is 
now for the first time paying its great debt to Nature. 



II 

THE SILENT ARMY 



MADAME PAQUIN, the famous French dress- 
maker, told me casually an incident that 
epitomizes the mental inheritance of the women of a 
military nation once more plunged abruptly into war. 

Her home is in Neuilly, one of the beautiful suburbs 
of Paris, and for years when awake early in the 
morning it had been her habit to listen for the heavy 
creaking of the great wagons that passed her house 
on their way from the gardens and orchards of the 
open country to the markets of Paris. Sometimes she 
would arise and look at them, those immense heavy 
trucks loaded high above their walls with the luscious 
produce of the fertile soil of France. On the seats 
were always three or four sturdy men: the farmer, 
and the sons who would help him unload at the 
"Halles." 

All these men, of course, were reservists. Mobiliza- 
tion took place on Sunday. On Monday morning 
Madame Paquin, like many others in that anxious 
city, was tossing restlessly on her bed when she heard 
the familiar creaking of the market wagons which 

24 



THE SILENT ARMY 25 

for so many years had done their share in feeding 
the hungry and fastidious people of Paris. Know- 
ing that every able-bodied man had disappeared from 
his usual haunts within a few hours after the Mobiliza- 
tion Order was posted, she sprang out of bed and 
looked through her blinds. 

There in the dull gray mist of the early morning 
she saw the familiar procession. There were the big 
trucks drawn by the heavily built cart horses and 
piled high with the abundant but precisely picked and 
packed produce of the market gardens. Paris was to 
be fed as usual. People must eat, war or no war. In 
spite of the summons which had excited the 
brains and depressed the hearts of a continent those 
trucks were playing their part in human destiny, not 
even claiming the right to be five minutes late. The 
only difference was that the seats on this gloomy 
August morning of 19 14 were occupied by large stolid 
peasant women, the wives and sisters and sweethearts 
of the men called to the colors. They had mobilized 
themselves as automatically as the Government had 
ordered out its army when the German war god de- 
flowered our lady of peace. 

These women may have carried heavy hearts under 
their bright coifs and cotton blouses, but their weather- 
beaten faces betrayed nothing but the stoical deter- 
mination to get their supplies to the Halles at the 
usual hour. And they have gone by every morning 
since. Coifs and blouses have turned black, but the 



26 THE LIVING PRESENT 

hard brown faces betray nothing, and they are never 
late. 

ii 

Up in the Champagne district, although many 
of the vineyards were in valleys between the two con- 
tending armies, the women undertook to care for the 
vines when the time came, risking their lives rather 
than sacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney 
of the Foreign Legion told me that when the French 
soldiers were not firing they amused themselves watch- 
ing these women pruning and trimming as fatalistically 
as if guns were not thundering east and west of them, 
shells singing overhead. For the most part they were 
safe enough, and nerves had apparently been left out 
of them ; but once in a while the Germans would amuse 
themselves raking the valley with the guns. Then the 
women would simply throw themselves flat and remain 
motionless — sometimes for hours — until "Les Bodies" 
concluded to waste no more ammunition. 

In Rheims the women have never closed their shops. 
They have covered their windows with sandbags, and 
by the light of lamp or candle do a thriving business 
while the big guns thunder. The soldiers, both British 
and French, like their trinkets and post-cards, to say 
nothing of more practical objects, and, admiring their 
inveterate pluck, not only patronize them liberally but 
sit in their coverts and gossip or flirt with the pretty 
girls for whom shells bursting in the street are too 
old a story for terror. 



y 



THE SILENT ARMY 27 

in 

Many of the women of the industrial classes who 
have been accustomed all their hard dry lives to live 
on the daily wage of father or husband have refused 
to work since the war began, preferring to scrape 
along on the Government allocation (allowance) of 
one- franc-twenty- five a day for the wives of soldiers, 
plus fifty centimes for each child (seventy-five in 
Paris). These notable exceptions will be dealt with 
later. France, like all nations, contains every variety 
of human nature, and, with its absence of illusions 
and its habit of looking facts almost cynically in the 
face, would be the last to claim perfection or even 
to conceal its infirmities. But the right side of its 
shield is very bright indeed, and the hands of many 
millions of women, delicate and toil-hardened, have 
labored to make it shine once more in history. 

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me 
of three instances that came within her personal ob- 
servation, and expressed no surprise at one or the 
other. She probably would not have thought them 
worth mentioning if she had not been asked expressly 
to meet me and give me certain information. One 
was of a woman whose husband had been a wage- 
earner, and, with six or eight children, had been able 
to save nothing. The allocation was not declared at 
once and this woman lost no time bewailing her fate 
or looking about for charitable groups of ladies to feed 
her with soup. She simply continued to run her hus- 



28 THE LIVING PRESENT 

band's estaminet (wine-shop), and, as the patronage 
was necessarily diminished, was one of the first to 
apply when munition factories invited women to fill 
the vacant places of men. She chose to work at night 
that she might keep the estaminet open by day for the 
men too old to fight and for the rapidly increasing 
number of "reformes" : those who had lost a leg or 
arm or were otherwise incapacited for service. 

A sister, who lived in Paris, immediately applied 
for one of the thousand vacant posts in bakeries, cut 
bread and buttered it and made toast for a tea-room 
in the afternoon, and found another job to sweep 
out stores. This woman had a son still under age but 
in training at the Front. He had been in the habit 
of paying her periodical visits, until this woman, al- 
ready toiling beyond her strength to support her other 
children, sat down one day and wrote to the boy's 
commanding officer asking him to permit no more 
leaves of absence, as the ordeal was too much for both 
of them. 

The third story was of a woman whom the Mayoress 
had often entertained in her homes, both official and 
private. When this woman, who had lived a life of 
such ease as the mother of eleven children may, was 
forced to take over the conduct of her husband's busi- 
ness (he was killed immediately) she discovered that 
he had been living on his capital, and when his estate 
was settled her only inheritance was a small wine-shop 
in Paris. She packed her trunks, spent what little 
money she had left on twelve railway tickets for the 



THE SILENT ARMY 29 

capital, and settled her brood in the small quarters be- 
hind the estaminet — fortunately the lessee, who was 
unmarried, had also been swept off to the Front. 

The next morning she reopened the doors and stood 
smiling behind the counter. The place was well 
stocked. It was a long while before she was obliged 
to spend any of her intake on aught but food and 
lights. So charming a hostess did she prove that her 
little shop was never empty and quickly became 
famous. She had been assured of a decent living long 
since. 

IV 

When I arrived in Paris in May (19 16) a little 
girl had just been decorated by the President of the 
Republic. Her father, the village baker, had made 
one of those lightning changes from citizen to soldier 
and her mother had died a few weeks before. She 
was an only child. The bakery had supplied not only 
the village but the neighboring inn, which had been a 
favorite lunching place for automobilists. Traveling 
for pleasure stopped abruptly, but as the road that 
passed the inn was one of the direct routes to the 
Front, it still had many hasty calls upon its hospi- 
tality. 

Now, bread-making in France is a science, the work 
of the expert, not of the casual housewife. The ac- 
complished cook of the inn knew no more about mix- 
ing and baking bread than he did of washing clothes ; 
and there was but this one bakery, hitherto sufficient, 



3 o THE LIVING PRESENT 

for the baker and his wife had been strong and in- 
dustrious. The inn was in despair. The village was 
in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but 
life without bread is unthinkable. 

No one thought of the child. 

It is possible that in her double grief she did not 
think of herself — for twenty-four hours. But the sec- 
ond day after mobilization her shop window was piled 
high with loaves as usual. The inn was supplied. The 
village was supplied. This little girl worked steadily 
and unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, 
returned minus a leg to give her assistance of a sort. 

The business of the bakery was nearly doubled dur- 
ing that time. Automobiles containing officers, huge 
camions with soldiers packed like coffee-beans, foot- 
weary marching regiments, with no time to stop for 
a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on 
hand. But with only a few hours' sleep the girl toiled 
on valiantly and no applicant for bread was turned 
empty-handed from the now famous bakery. 

How she kept up her childish strength and courage 
without a moment's change in her routine and on in- 
sufficient sleep can only be explained by the twin facts 
that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like all 
French children, no matter how individual, was too 
thoroughly imbued with the discipline of "The Fam- 
ily" to shirk for a moment the particular task that war 
had brought her. This iron discipline of The Family, 
one of the most salient characteristics of the French, 
is largely responsible for the matter-of-fact way in 



THE SILENT ARMY 31 

which every soldier of France, reservist or regular, 
and whatever his political convictions, has risen to this 
ordeal. And in him as been inculcated from birth 
patience and perseverance as well as loyalty to his 
beloved flag. 

The wives of hotel and shop keepers as well as the 
women of the farms have by far the best of it in 
time of war. The former are always their husband's 
partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step. 
When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they 
simply go on. Their task may be doubled and they 
may be forced to employ girls instead of men, but 
there is no mental readjusting. 

The women of the farms have always worked as 
hard as the men. Their doubled tasks involve a 
greater drain on their physical energies than the petite 
bourgeoise suffers, especially in those districts de- 
vastated by the first German invasion — the valley of 
the Marne. But they are very hardy, and they too 
hang on, for stoicism is the fundamental characteristic 
of the French. 

This stoicism as well as the unrivaled mental supple- 
ness was illustrated early in the war by the highly 
typical case of a laundress whose business was in one 
of the best districts of Paris. 

In France no washing is done in the house. This, 
no doubt, is one of the reasons why one's laundry 
bills, even on a brief visit, are among the major items, 
for les blanc hiss ens es are a power in the land. When 
I was leaving Paris the directrice of the ficole 



32 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Feminine in Passy, which had been my home for three 
months, suggested delicately that I leave a tip for the 
laundress, for, said this practical person, herself a 
sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has been 
extremely complaisante in coming every week for 
Madame's wash." I remarked that the laundress might 
reasonably feel some gratitude to me for adding 
weekly to her curtailed income; but my smiling di- 
rectrice shook her head. The favor, it appeared, was 
all on the other side. So, although I had tipped the 
many girls of my unique boarding-place with pleasure 
I parted with the sum designated for my patronizing 
laundress with no grace whatever. 

But to return to the heroine of the story told me 
by Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, one of the many Amer- 
ican women living in Paris who are working for 
France. 

This laundress had a very large business, in partner- 
ship with her husband. Nobody was expected to 
bring the family washing to her door, nor even to send 
a servant. The linen was called for and delivered, 
for this prosperous firm owned several large trucks 
and eight or ten strong horses. 

War was declared. This woman's husband and all 
male employees were mobilized. Her horses were 
commandeered. So were her trucks. Many of her 
wealthier patrons were already in the country and 
remained there, both for economy's sake and to en- 
courage and help the poor of their villages and farms. 
The less fortunate made shift to do their washing at 



THE SILENT ARMY 33 

home. Nevertheless there were patrons who still 
needed her services at least once a fortnight. 

This good woman may have had her moments of 
despair. If so, the world never knew it. She began 
at once to adjust herself to the new conditions and 
examine her resources. She importuned the Govern- 
ment until, to be rid of her, they returned two of her 
horses. She rented a cart and employed girls sud- 
denly thrown out of work, to take the place of the 
vanished men. The business limped on but it never 
ceased for a moment; and as the months passed it as- 
sumed a firmer gait. People returned from the coun- 
try, finding that they could be more useful in Paris 
as members of one or other of a thousand ceuvres ; and 
they were of the class that must have clean linen if 
the skies fall. Also, many Americans who had fled 
ignominiously .to England returned and plunged into 
work. And Americans, with their characteristic ex- 
travagance in lingerie, are held in high esteem by les 
blatichisseuses. 

Further assaults upon the amiable Government re- 
sulted in the return of more horses and one or two 
trucks. To-day, while the business by no means 
swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable 
courage and energy, combined with the economical 
habit and the financial genius of the French, has rid- 
den safely over the rocks into as snug a little harbor 
as may be found in any country at war. 



Ill 

THE MUNITION MAKERS 



ASIDE from the industrial class the women who 
suffered most at the outbreak of the war were 
those that worked in the shops. Paris is a city of 
little shops. The average American tourist knows 
them not, for her hectic experiences in the old days 
were confined to the Galeries Lafayette, the Louvre, 
the Bon Marche, and the Trois Quartiers. But during 
the greater part of 191 5 street after street exhibited 
the dreary picture of shuttered windows, where once 
every sort of delicate, solid, ingenious, costly, or catch- 
penny ware was displayed. Some of these were closed 
because the owner had no wife, many because the 
factories that supplied them were closed, or the work- 
men no longer could be paid. To-day one sees few 
of these wide iron shutters except at night, but the 
immediate consequence of the sudden change of the 
nation's life was that thousands of girls and women 
were thrown out of work: clerks, cashiers, dress- 
makers' assistants, artificial flower makers, florists, 
confectioners, workers in the fancy shops, makers of 
fine lingerie, extra servants and waitresses in the un- 

34 



THE MUNITION MAKERS 35 

fashionable but numerous restaurants. And then 
there were the women of the opera chorus, and those 
connected with the theater ; and not only the actresses' 
and the actors' families, but the wives of scene shifters 
sent off to the trenches, and of all the other humble 
folk employed about theaters, great and small. 

The poor of France do not invest their money in 
savings' banks. They buy bonds. On the Monday 
after mobilization the banks of France announced 
that they would buy no bonds. These poor bewildered 
women would have starved if the women of the more 
fortunate classes had not immediately begun to or- 
ganize relief stations and ouvroirs. 

Madame Lepauze, better known to the reading pub- 
lic of France as Daniel Lesauer, who is also the wife 
of the curator of the Petit Palais, was the first to 
open a restaurant for soup, and this was besieged 
from morning until night even before the refugees 
from Belgium and the invaded districts of France 
began to pour in. Her home is in the Petit Palais, 
and in the public gardens behind was Le Pavillion, one 
of the prettiest and most popular restaurants of Paris. 
She made no bones about asking the proprietor to 
place the restaurant and all that remained of his staff 
at her disposal, and hastily organizing a committee, 
began at once to ladle out soup. Many other depots 
were organized almost simultaneously (and not only 
in Paris but in the provincial towns ) , and when women 
were too old or too feeble to come for their daily 
ration it was left at their doors by carts containing 



36 THE LIVING PRESENT 

immense boilers of that nourishing soup only the 
French know how to make. 

Madame Lepauze estimates that her station alone 
fed a million women and children. Moreover, she 
and all the other women engaged in this patriotic duty 
had soon depleted their wardrobes after the refugees 
began streaming down from the north; it was gen- 
erally said that not a lady in Paris had more than 
one useful dress left and that was on her back. 

Many of these charitable women fled to the South 
during that breathless period when German occupa- 
tion seemed inevitable, but others, like Madame Pierre 
Goujon, of whom I shall have much to say later, and 
the Countess Greffuhle (a member of the valiant 
Chimay family of Belgium), stuck to their posts and 
went about publicly in order to give courage to the 
millions whose poverty forced them to remain. 

n 

The next step in aiding this army of helpless women 
was to open ouvroirs, or workrooms. Madame 
Paquin never closed this great branch of her dress- 
making establishment, and, in common with hundreds 
of other ouvroirs that sprang up all over France, paid 
the women a wage on which they could exist (besides 
giving them one meal) in return for at least half a 
day's work on necessary articles for the men in the 
trenches: underclothing, sleeping bags, felt slippers^ 
night garments; sheets and pillow-cases for the hos- 



THE MUNITION MAKERS 37 

pitals. As the vast majority of the peasant farmers 
and petite bourgeoisie had been used to sleeping in air- 
tight rooms they suffered bitterly during that first 
long winter and spring in the open. If it had not been 
for these bee-hive ouvroirs and their enormous output 
there would have been far more deaths from pneu- 
monia and bronchitis, and far more cases of tuber- 
culosis than there were. 

A good many of these ouvroirs are still in existence, 
but many have been closed ; for as the shops reopened 
the women not only went back to their former situa- 
tions but by degrees either applied for or were in- 
vited to fill those left vacant by men of fighting age. 

in 

And then there were the munition factories! The 
manager of one of these U sines de Guerre in Paris 
told me that he made the experiment of employing 
women with the deepest misgiving. Those seeking 
positions were just the sort of women he would have 
rejected if the sturdy women of the farms had ap- 
plied and given him any choice. They were girls or 
young married women who had spent all the work- 
ing years of their lives stooping over sewing-machines ; 
sunken chested workers in artificial flowers; confec- 
tioners ; florists ; waitresses ; clerks. One and all looked 
on the verge of a decline with not an ounce of reserve 
vitality for work that taxed the endurance of men. 
But as they protested that they not only wished to 



38 THE LIVING PRESENT 

support themselves instead of living on charity, but 
were passionately desirous of doing their bit while 
their men were enduring the dangers and privations 
of active warfare, and as his men were being with- 
drawn daily for service at the Front, he made up his 
mind to employ them and refill their places as rapidly 
as they collapsed. 

He took me over his great establishment and showed 
me the result. It was one of the astonishing ex- 
amples not only of the grim courage of women under 
pressure but of that nine-lived endowment of the 
female in which the male never can bring himself to 
believe save only when confronted by practical demon- 
stration. 

In the correspondence and card-indexing room 
there was a little army of young and middle-aged 
women whose superior education enabled them to do 
a long day's work with the minimum output of phy- 
sical energy, and these for the most part came from 
solid middle-class families whose income had been 
merely cut by the war, not extinguished. It was as I 
walked along the galleries and down the narrow pass- 
ages between the noisy machinery of the rest of that 
large factory that I asked the superintendent again 
and again if these women were of the same class as 
the original applicants. The answer in every case was 
the same. 

The women had high chests and brawny arms. 
They tossed thirty- and forty-pound shells from one 
to the other as they once may have tossed a cluster of 



THE MUNITION MAKERS 39 

artificial flowers. Their skins were clean and often 
ruddy. Their eyes were bright. They showed no 
signs whatever of overwork. They were almost with- 
out exception the original applicants. 

I asked the superintendent if there were no danger 
of heart strain. He said there had been no sign of 
it so far. Three times a week they were inspected by 
women doctors appointed by the Government, and any 
little disorder was attended to at once. But not one 
had been ill a day. Those that had suffered from 
chronic dyspepsia, colds, and tubercular tendency were 
now as strong as if they had lived their lives on farms. 
It was all a question of plenty of fresh air, and work 
that strengthened the muscles of their bodies, de- 
veloped their chests and gave them stout nerves and 
long nights of sleep. 

As I looked at those bare heavily muscled arms I 
wondered if any man belonging to them would ever 
dare say his soul was his own again. But as their 
heads are always charmingly dressed (an odd effect 
surmounting greasy overalls) and as they invariably 
powder before filing out at the end of the day's work, 
it is probable that a comfortable reliance may still 
be placed upon the ineradicable coquetry of the French 
woman. And the scarcer the men in the future the 
more numerous, no doubt, will be the layers of powder. 

I asked one pretty girl if she really liked the heavy, 
dirty, malodorous work, and she replied that making 
boutonnieres for gentlemen in a florist-shop was para- 
dise by contrast, but she was only too happy to be 



40 THE LIVING PRESENT 

doing as much for France in her way as her brother 
was in his. She added that when the war was over 
she should take off her blue linen apron streaked with 
machine grease once for all, not remain from choice 
as many would. But meanwhile it was not so bad! 
She made ten francs a day. Some of the women re- 
ceived as high as fifteen. Moreover, they bossed the 
few men whose brawn was absolutely indispensable 
and must be retained in the usine at all costs. 

These men took their orders meekly. Perhaps they 
were amused. The French are an ironic race. Per- 
haps they bided their time. But they never dreamed 
of disobeying those Amazons whose foot the Kaiser 
of all the Boches had placed on their necks. 



IV 

One of the greatest of these Usines de Guerre is 
at Lyons, in the buildings of the Exposition held 
shortly before the outbreak of the war. I went to 
this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which 
I shall always associate with the scent of locust*-blos- 
soms at the suggestion of James Hazen Hyde. He 
gave me a letter to the famous Mayor, M. Herriot, 
who was a member of the last Briand Cabinet. 

M. Herriot was also a Senator, and as he was leav- 
ing for Paris a few hours after I presented my letter 
he turned me over to a friend of his wife, Madame 
Castell, a native of Lyons, the daughter of one silk 
* It is called acacia in Europe. 



THE MUNITION MAKERS 41 

merchant and the widow of another. This charming 
young woman, who had spent her married life in New 
York, by the way, took me everywhere, and although 
we traversed many vast distances in the Mayor's auto- 
mobile, it seemed to me that I walked as many miles 
in hospitals, factories, ateliers (workrooms for teach- 
ing the mutilated new trades), and above all in the 
Usine de Guerre. 

Here not only were thousands of women employed 
but a greater variety of classes. The women of the 
town, unable to follow the army and too plucky to live 
on charity, had been among the first to ask for work. 
The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how 
they behaved when not actually at the machines, but 
at least they had proved as faithful and skillful as their 
more respectable sisters. 

Lyons was far more crowded and lively than Paris, 
which is so quiet that it calls to mind the lake that 
filled the crater of Mont Pelee before the eruption of 
1902. But this fine city of the South — situated almost 
as beautifully as Paris on both sides of a river — is not 
only a junction, it not only has industries of all sorts 
besides the greatest silk factories in the world, but 
every train these days brings down wounded for its 
many hospitals, and the next train brings the family 
and friends of these men, who, when able to afford 
it, establish themselves in the city for the period of 
convalescence. The restaurants and cafes were always 
crowded and this handsome city on the Rhone was 
almost gay. 



42 THE LIVING PRESENT 

There were practically no unemployed. The old 
women of the poor went daily to an empty court-room 
where they sat in the little amphitheater sewing or 
knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cut- 
ting and making uniforms with the same facility that 
men had long since acquired, or running sleeping bags 
through sewing-machines at the rate of thousands a 
day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early in the war, 
and its contribution to the needs of the Front has 
been enormous. 

The reformes (men too badly mutilated to be of 
further use at the front) are being taught many new 
trades in the ateliers : toy-making, wooden shoes with 
leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages, 
baskets, typewriting, stenography, weaving, repairing. 
In one of the many ateliers I visited with Madame 
Castell I saw a man who had only one arm, and the 
left at that, and only a thumb and little finger remain- 
ing of the ten he had taken into war, learning to 
write anew. When I was shown one of his exercises 
I was astounded. He wrote far better than I have 
ever done, and I can recall few handwritings so precise 
and elegant. One may imagine what a man accom- 
plishes who still has a good hand and arm. It was both 
interesting and pathetic to see these men guiding their 
work with their remaining hand and manipulating the 
machinery with the stump of the other arm. Those 
who come out from the battlefields with health intact 
will be no charge to the state, no matter what their 
mutilations. 



THE MUNITION MAKERS 43 

One poor fellow came in to the ficole Joffre while 
I was there. He was accompanied by three friends 
of the Mayor's, who hoped that some one of the new 
occupations might suit his case. He was large and 
strong and ruddy and he had no hands. Human in- 
genuity had not yet evolved far enough for him. He 
was crying quietly as he turned away. But his case 
is by no means hopeless, for when his stumps are no 
longer sensitive he will be fitted with a mechanical 
apparatus that will take the place of the hands he has 
given to France. 

Madame CasteH's work is supplying hospitals with 
anything, except food, they may demand, and in this 
she has been regularly helped by the Needlework Guild 
of Pennsylvania. 

Madame Herriot's ouvroir occupies the magnificent 
festal salon of the Hotel de Ville, with its massive 
chandeliers and its memories of a thousand dinners 
and balls of state from the days of Louis XIV down 
to the greatest of its mayors. She supplies French 
prisoners in Germany with the now famous comfort 
packages. Some of them she and her committee put 
up themselves; others are brought in by members of 
the family or the friends of the unfortunate men in 
Germany. The piece de resistance had always been 
a round loaf of bread, but on the day I first visited 
the salon consternation was reigning. Word had 
come from Germany that no more bread nor any sort 
of food stuff should be sent in the packages, and hun- 
dreds were being unpacked. Crisp loaves of bread 



44 THE LIVING PRESENT 

that would have brought comfort to many a poor soul 
were lying all over the place. 

The secret of the order was that civilian Germans 
were begging bread of the French prisoners, and this, 
of course, was bad for the tenderly nursed German 
morale. 



IV 

MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 



MLLE. JAVAL, unlike Madame Balli, was not a 
member of the fashionable society of Paris, a 
femme du monde, or a reigning beauty. But in certain 
respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one 
of the innumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bour- 
geoisie, living on inherited wealth, seeing as little as 
possible of the world beyond her immediate circle of 
relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent to it as 
only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up 
in a large and comfortable home — according to French 
ideas of comfort — governing it, when the duty de- 
scended to her shoulders, with all the native and prac- 
tised economy of the French woman, but until her 
mother's illness without a care, and even then without 
an extra contact, Mile. Javal's life slipped along for 
many years exactly as the lives of a million other 
girls in that entrenched secluded class slipped along 
before the tocsin, ringing throughout the land on 
August 2, 1 914, announced that once more the men 
of France must fight to defend the liberty of all classes 
alike. 

45 



46 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Between wars the great central mass of the popu- 
lation in France known as the bourgeoisie — who may 
be roughly defined as those that belong neither to the 
noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasant 
proprietors at the other, but have capital, however 
minute, invested in rentes or business, and who, be- 
ginning with the grande bourgeoisie, the haughty 
possessors of great inherited fortunes, continuing 
through the financial and commercial magnates, 
down to the petite bourgeoisie who keep flour- 
ishing little shops, hotels, etc. — live to get the most 
out of life in their narrow, traditional, curiously in- 
tensive way. They detest travel, although at least 
once in their lives they visit Switzerland and Italy; 
possibly, but with no such alarming frequency as to 
suggest an invasion, England. 

The most aspiring read the literature of the day, 
see the new plays (leaving the jeune Mle at home), 
take an intelligent interest in the politics of their own 
country, visit the annual salons, and if really advanced 
discuss with all the national animation such violent 
eruptions upon the surface of the delicately poised 
art life, which owes its very being to France, as im- 
pressionism, cubism, etc. Except among the very rich, 
where, as elsewhere, temptations are many and press- 
ing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much 
gossip, and there is the ever recurrent flutter over 
births, marriages, deaths. They have no snobbery in 
the climber's sense. When a bourgeois, however 
humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual' ' he is 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 47 

received with enthusiasm (if his table manners will 
pass muster) by the noblesse; but it is far more diffi- 
cult for a nobleman to enter the house of a bourgeois. 
It is seldom that he wants to, but sometimes there 
are sound financial reasons for forming this almost 
illegitimate connection, and then his motives are pene- 
trated by the keen French mind — a mind born with- 
out illusions — and interest alone dictates the issue. 
The only climbers in our sense are the wives of poli- 
ticians suddenly risen to eminence, and even then the 
social ambitions of these ladies are generally con- 
fined to arriving in the exclusive circles of the haute 
bourgeoisie. 

The bourgeoisie are as proud of their class as the 
noblesse of theirs, and its top stratum regards itself 
as the real aristocracy of the Republique Franchise, 
the families bearing ancient titles as anachronistic; 
although oddly enough they and the ancient noblesse 
are quite harmonious in their opinion of the Napoleonic 
aristocracy! One of the leaders in the grande bour- 
geoisie wrote me at a critical moment in the affairs of 
Greece: "It looks as if Briand would succeed in 
placing the lovely Princess George of Greece on the 
throne, and assuredly it is better for France to have a 
Bonaparte there than no one at all !" 

It is only when war comes and the men and women 
of the noblesse rise to the call of their country as 
automatically as a reservist answers the tocsin or the 
printed order of mobilization, that the bourgeoisie is 
forced to concede that there is a tremendous power 



48 THE LIVING PRESENT 

still resident in the prestige, organizing ability, social 
influence, tireless energy, and self-sacrifice of the dis- 
dained aristocracy. 

During the war ceuvres have been formed on so 
vast a scale that one sees on many committee lists the 
names of noblesse and bourgeois side by side. But 
it is a defensive alliance, bred of the stupendous neces- 
sities of war, and wherever possible each prefers to 
work without the assistance of the other. The French 
Army is the most democratic in the world. French 
society has no conception of the word, and neither 
noblesse nor bourgeoisie has the faintest intention of 
taking it up as a study. There is no active antagonism 
between the two classes — save, to be sure, when indi- 
vidual members show their irreconcilable peculiarities 
at committee meetings — merely a profound indiffer- 
ence. 

ii 

Mile. Javal, although living the usual restricted life 
before the war, and far removed from that section of 
her class that had begun to astonish Paris by an un- 
precedented surrender to the extravagancies in public 
which seemed to obsess the world before Europe ab- 
ruptly returned to its normal historic condition of 
warfare, was as highly educated, as conversant with 
the affairs of the day, political, intellectual, and ar- 
tistic, as any young woman in Europe. But the war 
found her in a semi-invalid condition and heart- 
broken over the death of her mother, whom she had 



j MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 49. 

nursed devotedly through a long illness ; her girlhood 
intimacies broken up not only by the marriage of her 
friends, but also by her own long seclusion; and — 
being quite French — feeling too aged, at a little over 
thirty, ever to interest any man again, aside from her 
fortune. In short she regarded her life as finished, 
but she kept house dutifully for her brother — her 
only close relation — and surrendered herself to mel- 
ancholy reflections. 

Then came the war. At first she took merely the 
languid interest demanded by her intelligence, being 
too absorbed in her own low condition to experience 
more than a passing thrill of patriotic fervor. But 
she still read the newspapers, and, moreover, women 
in those first anxious days were meeting and talking 
far more frequently than was common to a class that 
preferred their own house and garden to anything 
their friends, or the boulevards, or even the parks of 
Paris, could offer them. Mile. Javal found herself 
seeing more and more of that vast circle of inherited 
friends as well as family connections which no well- 
born bourgeoise can escape, and gradually became in- 
fected with the excitement of the hour; despite the 
fact that she believed her poor worn-out body never 
would take a long walk again. 

Then, one day, the thought suddenly illuminated 
her awakening mind: "How fortunate I am! I have 
no one to lose in this terrible war!" (Her brother was- 
too delicate for service.) "These tears I see every 
day after news has come that a father, a brother, a* 



50 THE LIVING PRESENT 

husband, a son, has fallen on the battlefield or died of 
horrible agony in hospital, I shall never shed. Al- 
most alone of the many I know, and the millions of 
women in France, I am mercifully exempt from an 
agony that has no end. If I were married, and were 
older and had sons, I should be suffering unendur- 
ably now. I am fortunate indeed and feel an ingrate 
that I have ever repined." 

Then naturally enough followed the thought that it 
behooved her to do something for her country, not 
only as a manifest of thanksgiving but also because it 
was her duty as a young woman of wealth and 
leisure. 

Oddly enough considering the delicate health in 
which she firmly believed, she tried to be a nurse. 
There were many amateurs in the hospitals in those 
days when France was as short of nurses as of every- 
thing else except men, and she was accepted. 

But nursing then involved standing all day on one's 
feet and sometimes all night as well, and her pampered 
body was far from strong enough for such a tax in 
spite of her now glowing spirit. While she was cast- 
ing about for some work in which she might really 
play a useful and beneficent role a friend invited her 
to drive out to the environs of Paris and visit the 
wretched eclopes, to whom several charitable ladies 
occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and choco- 
late. 

Then, at last, Mile. Javal found herself; and from 
a halting apprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 51 

limb, she became almost abruptly one of the most 
original and executive women in France — incidentally 
one of the healthiest. When I met her, some twenty 
months later, she had red cheeks and was the only 
one of all those women of all classes slaving for 
France who told me she never felt tired; in fact felt 
stronger every day. 

in 

The eclopes, in the new adaptation of the word, are 
men who are not ill enough for the military hospitals 
and not well enough to fight. They may have slight 
wounds, or temporary affections of the sight or hear- 
ing, the effect of heavy colds; or rheumatism, debili- 
tating sore throat, or furiously aching teeth; or they 
may be suffering too severely from shock to be of 
any use in the trenches. 

There are between six and seven thousand hospi- 
tals in France to-day (possibly more: the French 
never will give you any exact military figures; but 
certainly not less) ; but their beds are for the severely 
wounded or for those suffering from dysentery, fevers, 
pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis. In those first days 
of war before France, caught unprepared in so many 
ways, had found herself and settled down to the busi- 
ness of war; in that trying interval while she was ill 
equipped to care for men brought in hourly to the base 
hospitals, shattered by new and hideous wounds ; there 
was no place for the merely ailing. Men with organic 
affections, suddenly developed under the terrific strain, 



52 THE LIVING PRESENT 

were dismissed as Reformes Numero II — unmutilated 
in the service of their country; in other words, dis- 
missed from the army and, for nearly two years, with- 
out pension. But the large number of those tempor- 
arily out of condition were sent back of the lines, or 
to a sort of camp outside of Paris, to rest until they 
were in a condition to fight again. 

If it had not been for Mile. Javal it is possible that 
more men than one cares to estimate would never have 
fought again. The eclopes at that time were the most 
abject victims of the war. They remained together 
under military discipline, either behind the lines or on 
the outskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty fac- 
tories, thousands sleeping without shelter of any sort. 
Straw for the most part composed their beds, food 
was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched and un- 
comfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without 
care of any sort, that their slight ailments developed 
not infrequently into serious and sometimes fatal cases 
of bronchitis, pneumonia, and even tuberculosis. 

This was a state of affairs well known to General 
JofTre and none caused him more distress and anxiety. 
But — this was between August and November, 1914, 
it must be remembered, when France was anything 
but the magnificent machine she is to-day — it was 
quite impossible for the authorities to devote a cell 
of their harassed brains to the temporarily inept. 
Every executive mind in power was absorbed in pin- 
ning the enemy down, since he could not be driven 
out, feeding the vast numbers of men at the Front, 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 53 

reorganizing the munition factories, planning for the 
vast supplies of ammunition suddenly demanded, 
equipping the hospitals — when the war broke out there 
were no installations in the hospitals near the Front 
except beds — obtaining the necessary amount of surg- 
ical supplies, taking care of the refugees that poured 
into the larger cities by every train not only from 
Belgium but from the French towns invaded or 
bombarded — to mention but a few of the problems that 
beset France suddenly forced to rally and fight for 
her life, and, owing to the Socialist majority in the 
Chamber of Deputies, criminally unprepared. 

There were plenty of able minds in France that 
knew what was coming ; months before the war broke 
out (a year, one of the infirmiere majors told me; but, 
as I have said, it is difficult to pin a French official 
down to exact statements) the Service de Sante 
(Health Department of the Ministry of War) asked 
the Countess d'Haussonville, President of the Red 
Cross, to train as many nurses as quickly as possible, 
for there was not an extra nurse in a military hospital 
of France — in many there was none at all. But these 
patriotic and far-sighted men were powerless. The 
three years' service bill was the utmost result of their 
endeavors, and for six months after the war began 
they had not a gun larger than the famous Seventy- 
fives but those captured at the Battle of the Marne. 

As for the poor eclopes, there never was a clearer 
example of the weaker going to the wall and the devil 
taking the hindmost. They had been turned out to 



54 THE LIVING PRESENT 

grass mildly afflicted, but in a short time they were 
progressing rapidly toward the grave or that detest- 
able status known as Reformes Numero II. And 
every man counts in France. Quite apart from 
humanity it was a terribly serious question for the 
Grand Quartier General, where Joffre and his staff 
had their minds on the rack. 



IV 

The Cure of St. Honore d'Eylau was the first to 
discover the eclopes, and not only sent stores to cer- 
tain of the depots where they were herded, but per- 
suaded several ladies of Paris to visit and take them 
little presents. But practically every energetic and pa- 
triotic woman in France was already mobilized in the 
service of her country. As I have explained elsewhere, 
they had opened ouvroirs, where working girls sud- 
denly deprived of the means of livelihood could fend 
off starvation by making underclothing and other 
necessaries for the men at the Front. Upon these de- 
voted women, assisted by nearly all the American 
women resident in Paris, fell to a great extent the care 
of the refugees; and many were giving out rations 
three times a day, not only to refugees but to the poor 
of Paris, suddenly deprived of their wage earners. It 
was some time before the Government got round to 
paying the daily allowance of one- franc-twenty-five to 
the wives and seventy-five centimes (fifty outside of 
Paris) for each child, known as the allocation. More- 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 55 

over, in those dread days when the Germans were driv- 
ing straight for Paris, many fled with the Govern- 
ment to Bordeaux (not a few Americans ignomini- 
ously scampered off to England) and did not return 
for three weeks or more; during which time those 
brave enough to remain did ten times as much work 
as should be expected even of the nine-lived female. 

They knew at this critical time as well as later when 
they were breathing normally again that the poor 
eclopes beyond the barrier were without shelter in the 
autumn rains and altogether in desperate plight; but 
it was only now and again that a few found time to 
pay them a hasty visit and cheer them with those little 
gifts so dear to the imaginative heart of the French 
soldier. Sooner or later, of course, the Government 
would have taken them in hand and organized them as 
meticulously as they have organized every conceivable 
angle of this great struggle; but meanwhile thousands 
would have died or shambled home to litter the villages 
as hopeless invalids. Perhaps hundreds of thousands 
is a safer computation, and these hundreds of thou- 
sands Mile. Javal saved for France. 



Today there are over one hundred and thirty 
ficlope Depots in France ; two or three are near Paris, 
the rest in the towns and villages of the War Zone. 
The long baraques are well built, rain-proof and 
draught-proof, but with many windows which are open 



56 THE LIVING PRESENT 

when possible, and furnished with comfortable beds. 
In each depot there is a hospital baraque for those that 
need that sort of rest or care, a diet kitchen, and a 
fine large kitchen for those that can eat anything and 
have appetites of daily increasing vigor. 

These depots are laid out like little towns, the streets 
of the large ones named after famous generals and 
battles. Down one side is a row of low buildings 
in which the officers, doctors and nurses sleep; a 
•chemist shop; a well-fitted bathroom; storerooms for 
supplies ; and consulting offices. There is also, almost 
invariably, a cantine set up by young women — Eng- 
lish, American, French — where the men are supplied 
■at any time with cocoa, coffee, milk, lemonade, cakes ; 
and the little building itself is gaily decorated to please 
the color-loving French eye. 

Mile. Javal took me out to the environs of Paris 
to visit one of the largest of these depots, and there 
the men in hospital were nursed by Sisters of Charity. 
There was a set of well-filled bookshelves and a stage 
in the great refectory, where the men could sit on 
rainy days, read, write letters, sing, smoke, recite, and 
get up little plays. I saw a group of very contented 
looking poilus in the yard playing cards and smoking 
under a large tree. 

The surroundings were hideous — a railroad yard if 
I am not mistaken — but the little "town" itself was 
very pleasing to the eye, and certainly a haven of 
refuge for soldiers whose bodies and minds needed 
only repose, care, and kind words to send them back 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 57 

to the Front sounder by far than they had been in 
their unsanitary days before the war. 

Here they are forced to sleep with their windows 
open, to bathe, eat good food, instead of mortifying' 
the body for the sake of filling the family stocking; 
and they are doctored intelligently, their teeth filled, 
their tonsils and adenoids taken out, their chronic in- 
digestion cured. Those who survive the war will 
never forget the lesson and will do missionary work 
when they are at home once more. 

All that was dormant in Mile. Javal's fine brain 
seemed to awake under the horrifying stimulus of that 
first visit to the wretches herded like animals outside 
of Paris, where every man thought he was drafted for 
death and did not care whether he was or not ; where, 
in short, morale, so precious an asset to any nation in 
time of war, was practically nil. 

The first step was to get a powerful committee to- 
gether. Mile. Javal, although wealthy, could not carry 
through this gigantic task alone. The moratorium had 
stopped the payment of rents, factories were closed, 
tenants mobilized. Besides, she had already given 
right and left, as everybody else had done who had 
anything to give. It was growing increasingly diffi- 
cult to raise money. 

But nothing could daunt Mile. Javal. She managed 
to get together with the least possible delay a com- 
mittee of three hundred, and she obtained subscriptions 
in money from one thousand five hundred firms, be- 



58 THE LIVING PRESENT 

sides donations of food and clothing from eight 
hundred others, headed by the King of Spain. 

Her subscription list was opened by President 
Poincare with a gift of one thousand francs; the 
American War Relief Clearing House gave her four 
thousand three hundred francs, Madame Viviani con- 
tributed four thousand francs; the Comedie Fran- 
chise one thousand, and Raphael Weill of San Fran- 
cisco seven thousand seven hundred and fifty; Alex- 
ander Phillips of New York three thousand ; and capi- 
talists, banks, bank clerks, civil servants, colonials, 
school children, contributed sums great and small. 

Concerts were given, bazaars hastily but successfully 
organized, collections taken up. There was no end to 
Mile. Javal's resource, and the result was an almost 
immediate capital of several hundred thousand francs. 
When public interest was fairly roused, les pauvres 
eclopes became one of the abiding concerns of the 
French people, and they have responded as generously 
as they did to the needs of the more picturesque 
refugee or the starving within their gates. 

This great organization, known as "U Assistance 
aux Depots d'ficlopes, Petits Blesses et Petites Ma- 
lades, et aux Cantonments de Repos," was formally in- 
augurated on November 14, 1914, with Madame Jules 
Ferry as President, and Madame Viviani as Vice- 
President. Mile. Javal shows modestly on the official 
list as Secretaire Generate. 

The Government agreed to put up the baraques, and 
did so with the least possible delay. Mile. Javal and 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 59 

her Committee furnish the beds (there were seven 
hundred in one of the depots she showed me), support 
the dietary kitchen and the hospital baraques, and sup- 
ply the bathrooms, libraries, and all the little luxuries. 
The Government supports the central kitchen {grand 
regime), the doctors, and, when necessary, the sur- 
geons. 

VI 

Mile. Javal took me twice through the immense 
establishment on the Champs filysees, where she has 
not only her offices but workrooms and storerooms. 
In one room a number of ladies — in almost all of 
these ceuvres women give their services, remaining all 
day or a part of every day — were doing nothing but 
rolling cigarettes. I looked at them with a good deal 
of interest. They belonged to that class of French 
life I have tried to describe, in which the family is the 
all important unit; where children rarely play with 
other children, sometimes never; where the mother is 
a sovereign who is content to remain within the 
boundaries of her own small domain for months at a 
time, particularly if she lives not in an apartment, 
but in an hotel with a garden behind it. Thousands 
of these exemplary women of the bourgeoisie — hun- 
dreds of thousands — care little or nothing for "so- 
ciety." They call at stated intervals, upon which cere- 
monious occasion they drink coffee and eat pastry; 
give their young people dances when the exact con- 
ventional moment has arrived for putting them on the 



60 THE LIVING PRESENT 

market, and turn out in force at the great periodicities 
of life, but otherwise to live and die in the bosom 
of The Family is the measure of their ambition. 

I shall have a good deal to say later of the possible 
results of the vast upheaval of home life caused by 
this war; but of these women sitting for hours on end 
in a back room of Mile. Javal's central establishment 
in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked 
as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional 
manner, beyond cavil by the canny poilu, as if they 
were counting the family linen or superintending one 
of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's 
trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced 
raised her eyes, and I should not have been expected 
to distract her attention for a moment had not she 
told Mile. Javal that she had read my books (in the 
Tauchnitz edition) and would like to meet me when 
I called. 

It seemed to me that everything conceivable was in 
those large storerooms. I had grown used to seeing 
piles of sleeping-suits, sleeping-bags, trench slippers, 
warm underclothes, sabots, all that is comprised in the 
word vetement; but here were also immense boxes of 
books and magazines, donated by different firms and 
editors, about to be shipped to the depots; games of 
every sort; charming photogravures, sketches, prints, 
pictures, that would make the baraques gay and be- 
loved — all to be interspersed, however, with mottoes 
from famous writers calculated to elevate not only the 
morale but the morals of the idle. 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 61 

Then there were cases of handkerchiefs, of pens 
and paper, pencils, songs with and without music, 
knives, pipes, post-cards, razors, parasiticides, choco- 
late, vaseline, perfumes (many of these articles are 
donations from manufacturers), soap in vast quanti- 
ties; books serious and diverting; pamphlets purposed 
to keep patriotism at fever pitch, or to give the often 
ignorant peasant soldier a clear idea of the designs of 
the enemy. 

In small compartments at one end of the largest 
of the rooms were exhibited the complete installations 
of the baraques, the portable beds, kitchen and dining- 
room utensils and dishes, all extraordinarily neat and 
compact. In another room was a staff engaged in 
correspondence with officers, doctors and surgeons at 
the Front, poilus, or the hundred and one sources that 
contribute to the great ceuvre. Girls, young widows, 
young and middle-aged married women whose hus- 
bands and sons were fighting, all give their days freely 
and work far harder and more conscientiously than 
most women do for hire. 

All of these presents, when they arrive at the 
depots, are given out personally by the officers, and 
this as much as the genuine democracy of the men in 
command has served to break down the suspicious or 
surly spirit of the French peasant on his first service, 
to win over the bumptious industrial, and even to 
subdue the militant anarchist and predatory Apache. 
This was Mile. J aval's idea, and has solved a problem 
for many an anxious officer. 



62 THE LIVING PRESENT 

She said to me with a shrug: "My brother and I 
are now run by our servants. I have quite lost con- 
trol. Our home is like a bachelor apartment. After 
the war is over I must turn them all out and get a 
new staff." 

And this is but one of the minor problems for men 
and women the Great War has bred. 



VII 

Magic lanterns and cinemas are also among the 
presents sent to the eclope depots in the War Zone; 
some of which, by the way, are charmingly situated. 
I visited one just outside of a town which by a miracle 
had escaped the attention of the enemy during the 
retreat after the Battle of the Marne. The buildings 
of the depot have been built in the open fields but 
heavily ambushed by fine old trees. Near by is a river 
picturesquely winding and darkly shaded. Here I saw 
a number of eclopes fishing as calmly as if the roar 
of the guns that came down the wind from Verdun 
were but the precursor of an evening storm. 

In the large refectory men were writing home; 
reading not only books but the daily and weekly news- 
papers with which the depots are generously supplied 
by the editors of France. Others were exercising in 
a gymnasium or playing games with that childish ab- 
sorption that seems to be as natural to a soldier at the 
Front when off duty as the desire for a bath or a 
limbering of the muscles when he leaves the trenches. 



MLLE. JAVAL AND THE ECLOPES 63 

Another of Mile. Javal's ideas was to send to the 
War Zone automobiles completely equipped with a 
dental apparatus in charge of a competent dentist. 
These automobiles travel from depot to depot and even 
give their services to hospitals where there are no 
dental installations. 

Other automobiles have a surgeon and the equip- 
ment for immediate facial operations; and there are 
migratory pedicures, masseurs, and barbers. So 
heavy has been the subscription, so persistent and in- 
telligent the work of all connected with this great 
ceuvre, so increasingly fertile the amazing brain of 
Mile. Javal, that practically nothing is now wanted to 
make these Depots d'ficlopes perfect instruments for 
saving men for the army by the hundred thousand. I 
once heard the estimate of the army's indebtedness 
placed as high as a million and a half. 

The work of M. Frederic Masson must not be ig- 
nored, and Madame Balli assisted him for a short 
time, until compelled to concentrate on her other work ; 
but it is not comparable in scope to that of Mile. Javal. 
Hers is unprecedented, one of the greatest achieve- 
ments of France behind the lines, and of any woman 
at any time. 



V 

THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY 



MADAME VfiRONE, one of the leading law- 
yers and feminists of Paris, told me that with- 
out the help of the women France could not have re- 
mained in the field six months. This is no doubt true. 
Probably it has been true of every war that France 
has ever waged. Nor has French history ever been 
reluctant to admit its many debts to the sex it admires, 
without idealization perhaps, but certainly in more 
ways than one. As far back as the reign of Louis 
XI memoirs pay their tribute to the value of the 
French woman both in peace and in war. This war 
has been one of the greatest incentives to women in 
all the belligerent countries that has so far occurred 
in the history of the world, and the outcome is a 
problem that the men of France, at least, are already 
revolving in their vigilant brains. 

On the other hand the inept have just managed to 
exist. Madame Verone took me one day to a restau- 
rant on Montmartre. It had been one of the largest 
cabarets of that famous quarter, and at live or six 
tables running its entire length I saw seven hundred 
men and women eating a substantial dejeuner of veal 

64 



WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY 65 

swimming in spinach, dry puree of potatoes, salad, 
apples, cheese, and coffee. For this they paid ten 
cents (fifty centimes) each, the considerable deficit 
being made up by the ladies who had founded the 
ceuvre and run it since the beginning of the war. 

Nearly all of these people escaping charity by so 
narrow a margin had been second-rate actors and 
scene shifters, or artists — of both sexes — the men be- 
ing either too old or otherwise ineligible for the army. 
This was their only square meal during twenty-four 
hours. They made at home such coffee as they could 
afford, and went without dinner more often than not. 
The daughter of this very necessary charity, a hand- 
some strongly built girl, told me that she had waited 
on her table without a day's rest for eighteen months. 

I am frank to say that I could not eat the veal and 
spinach, and confined myself to the potatoes and bread. 
But no doubt real hunger is a radical cure for fastidi- 
ousness. 

Later in the day Madame Verone took me to the 
once famous Abbaye, now a workroom for the dress- 
ers of dolls, a revived industry which has given em- 
ployment to hundreds of women. Some of the wildest 
revels of Paris had taken place in the restaurant now 
incongruously lined with rows of dolls dressed in 
every national costume of Allied Europe. They sat 
sedately against the walls, Montenegrins, Serbians, 
Russians, Italians, Sicilians, Roumanians, Poilus, 
Alsatians, Tommies,* a strange medley, correctly but 
*No doubt there are now little Uncle Sams. 



66 THE LIVING PRESENT 

cheaply dressed. At little tables, mute records of dis- 
reputable nights, sat women stitching, and outside the 
streets of Montmartre were as silent as the grave. 



ii 

A few days later I was introduced to a case of 
panurgy that would have been almost extreme in any 
but a Frenchwoman. 

Madame Camille Lyon took me to call on Madame 
Pertat, one of the most successful doctors in Paris. 
I found both her history and her personality highly 
interesting, and her experience no doubt will be a 
severe shock to many Americans who flatter them- 
selves that we alone of all women possess the price- 
less gift of driving initiative. 

Madame Pertat was born in a provincial town, of 
a good family, and received the usual education with 
all the little accomplishments that were thought neces- 
sary for a young girl of the comfortable bourgeoisie. 
She confessed to me naively that she had coquetted a 
good deal. As her brother was a doctor and brought 
his friends to the house it was natural that she should 
marry into the same profession ; and as she continued 
to meet many doctors and was a young woman of 
much mental curiosity and a keen intelligence it was 
also natural that she should grow more and more 
deeply interested in the science of medicine and take 
part in the learned discussions at her table. 

One day her husband, after a warm argument with 



WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY 67 

her on the new treatment of an old disease, asked her 
why she did not study medicine. She had ample leis- 
ure, no children, and, he added gallantly, a mind to do 
it justice. 

The suggestion horrified her, as it would have hor- 
rified her large family connection and circle of friends 
in that provincial town where standards are as slowly 
undermined as the cliffs of France by the action of the 
sea. 

Shortly afterward they moved to Paris, where her 
husband, being a man of first-rate ability and many 
friends, soon built up a lucrative practice. 

Being childless, full of life, and fond of variety, 
they spent far more money than was common to their 
class, saving practically nothing. They had a hand- 
some apartment with the usual number of servants; 
Madame Pertat's life was made up of a round of 
dressmakers, bridge, calls during the daytime, and 
companioning her husband at night to any one of the 
more brilliant restaurants where there was dancing. 
Sometimes they dined early and went to the opera or 
the play. 

Suddenly the really serious mind of this woman 
revolted. She told me that she said to her husband : 
"This is abominable. I cannot stand this life. I shall 
study medicine, which, after all, is the only thing that 
really interests me." 

She immediately entered upon the ten years' course, 
which included four years as an interne. France has 
now so far progressed that she talks of including the 



68 THE LIVING PRESENT 

degree of baccalaureate in the regular school course of 
women, lest they should wish to study for a profession 
later; but at that time Madame Pertat's course in 
medicine was long drawn out, owing to the necessity 
of reading for this degree. 

She was also obliged to interrupt her triumphal 
progress in order to bring her first and only child 
into the world; but finally graduated with the highest 
honors, being one of the few women of France who 
have received the diploma to practice. 

To practice, however, was the least of her inten- 
tions, now that she had a child to occupy her mind 
and time. Then, abruptly, peace ended and war came. 
Men disappeared from their usual haunts like mist. 
It was as if the towns turned over and emptied their 
men on to the ancient battlefields, where, generation 
after generation, war rages on the same historic spots 
but re-naming its battles for the benefit of chronicler 
and student. 

M. le Docteur Pertat was mobilized with the rest. 
Madame's bank account was very slim. Then once 
more she proved that she was a woman of energy 
and decision. Without any formalities she stepped 
into her husband's practice as a matter of course. On 
the second day of the war she ordered out his run- 
about and called on every patient on his immediate 
list, except those that would expect attention in his 
office during the usual hours of consultation. 

Her success was immediate. She lost none of her 
husband's patients and gained many more, for every 



WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY 69 

doctor of military age had been called out. Of course 
her record in the hospitals was well known, not only 
to the profession but to many of Dr. Pertat's patients. 
Her income, in spite of the war, is larger than it 
ever was before. 

She told me that when the war was over she should 
resign in her husband's favor as far as her general 
practice was concerned, but should have a private 
practice of her own, specializing in skin diseases and 
facial blemishes. She could never be idle again, and 
if it had not been for the brooding shadow of war and 
her constant anxiety for her husband, she should look 
back upon those two years of hard medical practice and 
usefulness as the most satisfactory of her life. 

She is still a young woman, with vivid yellow hair 
elaborately dressed, and it was evident that she had 
none of the classic professional woman's scorn of 
raiment. Her apartment is full of old carved furni- 
ture and objets d'art, for she had always been a col- 
lector. Her most conspicuous treasure is a rare and 
valuable Russian censer of chased silver. This was on 
the Germans' list of valuables when they were sure 
of entering Paris in September, 1914. Through their 
spies they knew the location of every work of art ini 
the most artistic city in the world. 

Madame Pertat is one of the twenty-five women 
doctors in Paris. All are flourishing. When the doc- 
tors return for leave of absence etiquette forbids 
them to visit their old patients while their brothers are 
still at the Front ; and the same rule applies to doctors 



yo THE LIVING PRESENT 

who are stationed in Paris but are in Government 
service. The women are having a magnificent inning, 
and whether they will be as magnanimous as Madame 
Pertat and take a back seat when the men return 
remains to be seen. The point is, however, that they 
are but another example of the advantage of technical 
training combined with courage and energy. 



in 

On the other hand, I heard of many women who, 
thrown suddenly out of work, or upon their own 
resources, developed their little accomplishments and 
earned a bare living. One daughter of an avocat, who 
had just managed to keep and educate his large fam- 
ily and was promptly mobilized, left the Beaux Arts 
where she had studied for several years, and after 
some floundering turned her knowledge of designing 
to the practical art of dress. She goes from house 
to house designing and cutting out gowns for women 
no longer able to afford dressmakers but still anxious 
to please. She hopes in time to be employed in one 
of the great dressmakers' establishments, having re- 
nounced all thought of being an artist in a more 
grandiose sense. Meanwhile she keeps the family 
from starving while her mother and sisters do the 
housework. Her brothers are in the military colleges 
and will be called out in due course if the war con- 
tinues long enough to absorb all the youth of France. 

Mile. E., the woman who told me her story, was 



WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY 71 

suffering from the effects of the war herself. I 
climbed five flights to talk to her, and found her in a 
pleasant little apartment looking out over the roofs 
and trees of Passy. Formerly she had taken a certain 
number of American girls to board and finish off in 
the politest tongue in Europe. The few American 
girls in Paris to-day (barring the anachronisms that 
paint and plume for the Ritz Hotel) are working with 
the American Ambulance, the American Fund for 
French Wounded, or Le Bien-fitre du Blesse, and she 
sits in her high flat alone. 

But she too has adapted herself, and kept her little 
home. She illuminates for a Bible house, and paints 
exquisite Christmas and Easter cards. Of course she 
had saved something, for she was the frugal type and 
restaurants and the cabaret could have no call for 
her. 

But alas! said she, there were the taxes, and ever 
more taxes. And who could say how long the war 
would last? I cheerfully suggested that we might 
have entered upon one of those war cycles so familiar 
in history and that the world might not know peace 
again for thirty years. Although the French are very 
optimistic about the duration of this war (and, no 
doubt prompted by hope, I am myself) she agreed 
with me, and reiterated that one must not relax effort 
for a moment. 

Of course she has her filleul (godson) at the Front, 
a poor poilu who has no family ; and when he goes out 
the captain finds her another. She knits him socks 



72 THE LIVING PRESENT 

and vests, and sends him such little luxuries as he asks 
for, always tobacco, and often chocolate. 

The French bourgeoisie — or French women of any 
class for that matter — do not take kindly to clubs. 
For this reason their organizations limped somewhat 
in the earlier days and only their natural financial 
genius, combined with the national practice of econ- 
omy, enabled them to develop that orderly team work 
so natural to the Englishwoman. Mile. E. told me 
with a wry face that she detested the new clubs formed 
for knitting and sewing and rolling bandages. "It is 
only old maids like myself/' she added, "who go 
regularly. After marriage French women hate to 
leave their homes. Of course they go daily to the 
ouvroirs, where they have their imperative duties, but 
they don't like it. I shall belong to no club when the 
war is over and my American girls have returned to 
Paris." . 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON is another young 
Frenchwoman who led not only a life of ease 
and careless happiness up to the Great War, but also, 
and from childhood, an uncommonly interesting one, 
owing to the kind fate that made her the daughter of 
the famous Joseph Reinach. 

M. Reinach, it is hardly worth while to state even 
for the benefit of American readers, is one of the fore- 
most "Intellectuals" of France. Born to great wealth, 
he determined in his early youth to live a life of active 
usefulness, and began his career as private secretary 
to Gambetta. His life of that remarkable Gascon is 
the standard work. He was conspicuously instru- 
mental in securing justice for Dreyfus, championing 
him in a fashion that would have wrecked the public 
career of a man less endowed with courage and per- 
sonality : twin gifts that have carried him through the 
stormy seas of public life in France. 

His history of the Dreyfus case in seven volumes 
is accepted as an authoritative however partisan re- 
port of one of the momentous crises in the French 

73 



74 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Republic. He also has written on alcoholism and 
election reforms, and he has been for many years 
a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, standing for 
democracy and humanitarianism. 

On a memorable night in Paris, in June, 19 16, it 
was my good fortune to sit next to Monsieur Reinach 
at a dinner given by Mr. Whitney Warren to the 
American newspaper men in Paris, an equal number 
of French journalists, and several "Intellectuals' ' 
more or less connected with the press. The scene was 
the private banquet room of the Hotel de Crillon, a 
fine old palace on the Place de la Concorde; and in 
that ornate red and gold room where we dined so 
cheerfully, grim despots had crowded not so many 
years before to watch from its long windows the 
executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 

I was the only woman, a whim of Mr. Warren's, 
and possibly that is the reason I found this dinner in 
the historic chamber above a dark and quiet Paris 
the most interesting I ever attended ! Perhaps it was 
because I sat at the head of the room between Mon- 
sieur Reinach and Monsieur Hanotaux; perhaps 
merely because of the evening's climax. 

Of course we talked of nothing but the war (one is 
bored to death in Paris if any other subject comes up). 
Only one speech was made, an impassioned torrent of 
gratitude by Monsieur Hanotaux directed at our dis- 
tinguished host, an equally impassioned "Friend of 
France." I forget just when it was that a rumor 
began to run around the room and electrify the atmos- 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 75 

phere that a great naval engagement had taken place 
in the North Sea; but it was just after coffee was 
served that a boy from the office of Le Figaro entered 
with a proof-sheet for Monsieur Reinach to correct — 
he contributes a daily column signed "Polybe." 
Whether the messenger brought a note from the editor 
or merely whispered his information, again I do not 
know, but it was immediately after that Monsieur 
Reinach told us that news had come through Switzer- 
land of a great sea fight in which the Germans had 
lost eight battleships. 

"And as the news comes from Germany," he re- 
marked dryly, "and as the Germans admit having lost 
eight ships we may safely assume that they have lost 
sixteen." And so it proved. 

The following day in Paris was the gloomiest I 
have ever experienced in any city, and was no doubt 
one of the gloomiest in history. Not a word had come 
from England. Germany had claimed uncontradicted 
an overwhelming victory, with the pride of Britain 
either at the bottom of the North Sea or hiding like 
Churchill's rats in any hole that would shelter them 
from further vengeance. People, both French and 
American, who had so long been waiting for the 
Somme drive to commence that they had almost re- 
linquished hope went about shaking their heads and 
muttering: "Won't the British even fight on the 
sea?" 

I felt suicidal. Presupposing the continued omni- 
potence of the British Navy, the Battle of the Marne 



76 THE LIVING PRESENT 

had settled the fate of Germany, but if that Navy had 
proved another illusion the bottom had fallen out of 
the world. Not only would Europe be done for, but 
the United States of America might as well prepare to 
black the boots of Germany. 

When this war is over it is to be hoped that all the 
censors will be taken out and hanged. In view of the 
magnificent account of itself which Kitchener's Army 
has given since that miserable day, to say nothing of 
the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its 
best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems noth- 
ing short of criminal that the English censor should 
have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in con- 
tempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in 
the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, 
and presumably does not mind it. 

On the following day he condescended to release 
the truth. We all breathed again, and I kept one of 
my interesting engagements with Madame Pierre 
Goujon. 

ii 

This beautiful young woman's husband was killed 
during the first month of the war. Her brother was 
reported missing at about the same time, and although 
his wife has refused to go into mourning there is 
little hope that he will ever be seen alive again or that 
his body will be found. There was no room for doubt 
in the case of Pierre Goujon. 

Perhaps if the young officer had died in the natural 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 77 

course of events his widow would have been over- 
whelmed by her loss, although it is difficult to imag- 
ine Madame Goujon a useless member of society at 
any time. Her brilliant black eyes and her eager 
nervous little face connote a mind as alert as Monsieur 
Reinach's. As it was, she closed her own home — she 
has no children — returned to the great hotel of her 
father in the Pare Monceau, and plunged into work. 

It is doubtful if at any period of the world's history 
men have failed to accept (or demand) the services 
of women in time of war, and this is particularly true 
of France, where women have always counted as units 
more than in any European state. Whether men have 
heretofore accepted these invaluable services with 
gratitude or as a matter-of-course is by the way. 
Never before in the world's history have fighting na- 
tions availed themselves of woman's co-operation in 
as wholesale a fashion as now; and perhaps it is the 
women who feel the gratitude. 

Of course the first duty of every Frenchwoman in 
those distracted days of August, 19 14, was, as I have 
mentioned before, to feed the poor women so sud- 
denly thrown out of work or left penniless with large 
families of children. Then came the refugees pour- 
ing down from Belgium and the invaded districts of 
France ; and these had to be clothed as well as fed. 

In common with other ladies of Paris, both French 
and American, Madame Goujon established ouvroirs 
after the retreat of the Germans, in order to give use- 
ful occupation to as many of the destitute women as 



78 THE LIVING PRESENT 

possible. But when these were in running order she 
joined the Baroness Lejeune (born a Princess Murat 
and therefore of Napoleon's blood) in forming an 
organization both permanent and on the grand scale. 

The Baroness Lejeune also had lost her husband 
early in the war. He had been detached from his 
regiment and sent to the Belgian front to act as body- 
guard to the Prince of Wales. Receiving by a special 
messenger a letter from his wife, to whom he had 
been married but a few months, he separated himself 
from the group surrounding the English Prince and 
walked off some distance alone to read it. Here a 
bomb from a taube intended for the Prince hit and 
killed him instantly. 

Being widows themselves it was natural they should 
concentrate their minds on some organization that 
would be of service to other widows, poor women 
without the alleviations of wealth and social eminence, 
many of them a prey to black despair. Calling in 
other young widows of their own circle to help (the 
number was already appalling), they went about their 
task in a business-like way, opening offices in the Rue 
Vizelly, which were subsequently moved to 20 Rue 
Madrid. 

When I saw these headquarters in May, 191 6, the 
ceuvre was a year old and in running order. In one 
room were the high chests of narrow drawers one sees 
in offices and public libraries. These were for card 
indexes and each drawer contained the dossiers of 
widows who had applied for assistance or had been 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 79 

discovered suffering in lonely pride by a member of 
the committee. Each dossier included a methodical 
account of the age and condition of the applicant, of 
the number of her children, and the proof that her 
husband was either dead or "missing." Also, her own 
statement of the manner in which she might, if as- 
sisted, support herself. 

Branches of this great work— Association d'Aide 
aux Veuves Militaires de la Grande Guerre— have 
been established in every department of France ; there 
is even one in Lille. The Central Committee takes 
care of Paris and environs, the number of widows 
cared for by them at that time being two thousand. 
No doubt the number has doubled since. 

In each of the rooms I visited a young widow sat 
before a table, and I wondered then, as I wondered 
many times, if all the young French widows really 
were beautiful or only created the complete illusion 
in that close black-hung toque with its band of white 
crepe just above the eyebrows and another from ear 
to ear beneath the chin. When the eyes are dark, the 
eyebrows heavily marked, no hair visible, and the pro- 
file regular, the effect is one of poignant almost sen- 
sational beauty. Madame Goujon looks like a young 
abbess. 

I do not wish to be cynical but it occurred to me 
that few of these young widows failed to be consoled 
when they stood before their mirrors arrayed for pub- 
lic view, however empty their hearts. Before I had 
left Paris I had concluded that it was the mothers who 



80 THE LIVING PRESENT 

were to be pitied in this accursed war. Life is long- 
and the future holds many mysteries for handsome 
young widows. Nevertheless the higher happiness is 
sometimes found in living with a sacred memory and 
I have an idea that one or two of these young widows 
I met will be faithful to their dead. 

Smooth as this ceuvre appeared on the surface it 
had not been easy to establish and every day brought 
its frictions and obstacles. The French temperament 
is perhaps the most difficult in the world to deal with, 
even by the French themselves. Our boasted individ- 
uality is merely in the primal stage compared with 
the finished production in France. Even the children 
are far more complex and intractable than ours. They 
have definite opinions on the subject of life, charac- 
ter, and the disposition of themselves at the age of six. 

Madame Goujon told me that every widow in need 
of help, no matter how tormented or however worthy, 
had to be approached with far more tact than possible 
donors, and her idiosyncrasies studied and accepted 
before anything could be done with her, much less 
for her. 

Moreover there was the great problem of the women 
who would not work. These were either of the indus- 
trial class, or of that petite bourgeoisie whose hus- 
bands, called to the colors, had been small clerks and 
had made just enough to keep their usually childless 
wives in a certain smug comfort. 

These women, whose economical parents had mar- 
ried them into their own class, or possibly boosted 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 81 

them one step higher, with the aid of the indispensable 
dot, never had done any work to speak of, and many 
of them manifested the strongest possible aversion 
from working, even under the spur of necessity. They 
had one- franc-twenty- five a day from the Government 
and much casual help during the first year of the war, 
when money was still abundant, from charitable mem- 
bers of the noblesse or the haute bourgeoisie. As 
their dot had been carefully invested in rentes (bonds) 
if it continued to yield any income at all this was 
promptly swallowed up by taxes. 

As for the women of the industrial class, they not 
only received one- franc-twenty-five a day but, if liv- 
ing in Paris, seventy-five centimes for each child — 
fifty if living in the provinces; and families in the 
lower classes of France are among the largest in the 
world. Five, ten, fifteen children; I heard these fig- 
ures mentioned daily, and, on one or two occasions, 
nineteen. Mrs. Morton Mitchell of San Francisco, 
who lives in Paris in the Avenue du Bois de Bologne, 
discovered after the war broke out that the street- 
sweeper to whom she had often given largesse left 
behind him when called to the Front something like 
seventeen dependents. Indeed, they lost no time ac- 
quainting her with the fact; they called on her in a 
body, and she has maintained them ever since. 

While it was by no means possible in the case of 
the more moderate families to keep them in real com- 
fort on the allocation, the women, many of them, 
had a pronounced distaste for work outside of their 



82 THE LIVING PRESENT 

little homes, as they had their liberty for the first time 
in their drab and overworked lives and proposed to 
enjoy it. No man to dole them out just enough to 
keep a roof over their heads and for bread and stew, 
while he spent the rest on tobacco, at the wine-shops, 
or for dues to the Socialist or Syndicalist Club. Every 
centime that came in now was theirs to administer as 
they pleased. 

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me 
that she had heard these women say more than once 
they didn't care how long the war lasted; owing to 
the prevalence of the alcoholism octopus which has 
fastened itself on France of late years the men often 
beat their wives as brutally as the low-class English- 
men, and this vice added to the miserliness of their 
race made their sojourn in the trenches a welcome re- 
lief. Of course these were the exceptions, for the 
Frenchman in the main is devoted to his family, but 
there were enough of them to emerge into a sudden 
prominence after the outbreak of the war when char- 
itable women were leaving no stone unturned to re- 
lieve possible distress. 

There is a story of one man with thirteen children 
who was called to the colors on August second, and 
whose wife received allocation amounting to more 
than her husband's former earnings. It was some 
time after the war began that the rule was made ex- 
empting from service every man with more than six 
children. When it did go into effect the fathers of 
large flocks hastened home, anticipating a joyful re- 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 83 

union. But the wife of this man, at least, received 
him with dismay and ordered him to enlist — within 
the hour. 

"Don't you realize," she demanded, "that we never 
were so well off before? We can save for the first 
time in our lives and I can get a good job that would 
not be given me if you were here. Go where you 
belong. Every man's place is in the trenches." 

There is not much romance about a marriage of 
that class, nor is there much romance left in the har- 
ried brain of any mother of thirteen. 



in 

Exasperating as those women were who preferred 
to live with their children on the insufficient allocation, 
it is impossible not to feel a certain sympathy for 
them. In all their lives they had known nothing but 
grinding work; liberty is the most precious thing in 
the world and when tasted for the first time after 
years of sordid oppression it goes to the head. More- 
over, the Frenchwoman has the most extraordinary 
faculty for "managing." The poorest in Paris would 
draw their skirts away from the slatterns and their 
dirty offspring in our own tenement districts. 

One day I went with Madame Paul Dupuy over to 
what she assured me was one of the poorest districts 
of Paris. Our visit had nothing to do with the war. 
She belonged to a charitable organization which for 
years had paid weekly visits to the different parishes 



84 THE LIVING PRESENT 

of the capital and weighed a certain number of babies. 
The mothers that brought their howling offspring 
(who abominated the whole performance) were given 
money according to their needs — vouched for by the 
priest of the district — and if the babies showed a fall- 
ing off in weight they were sent to one of the doctors 
retained by the society. 

The little stone house (situated, by the way, in an 
old garden of a hunting-lodge which is said to have 
been the rendezvous de chassc of Madame du Barry), 
where Madame Dupuy worked, with an apron 
covering her gown and her sleeves rolled up, was 
like an ice-box, and the naked babies when laid 
on the scales shrieked like demons. One male child, I 
remember, sat up perfectly straight and bellowed his 
protest with an insistent fury and a snorting disdain 
at all attempts to placate him that betokened the true 
son of France and a lusty long-distance recruit for 
the army. All the children, in fact, although their 
mothers were unmistakably poor, looked remarkably 
plump and healthy. 

After a time, having no desire to contract perito- 
nitis, I left the little house and went out and sat in 
the car. There I watched for nearly an hour the life 
of what we would call a slum. The hour was about 
four in the afternoon, when even the poor have a little 
leisure. The street was filled with women sauntering 
up and down, gossiping, and followed by their young. 
These women and children may have had on no un- 
derclothes : their secrets were not revealed to me ; but 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 85 

their outer garments were decent. The children had a 
scrubbed look and their hair was confined in tight pig- 
tails. The women looked stout and comfortable. 

They may be as clean to-day but I doubt if they are 
as stout and as placid of expression. The winter was 
long and bitter and coal and food scarce, scarcer, and 
more scarce. 

IV 

The two classes of women with whom Madame 
Goujon and her friends have most difficulty are in 
the minority and merely serve as the shadows in the 
great canvas crowded with heroic figures of French 
women of all classes who are working to the limit of 
their strength for their country or their families. 
They may be difficult to manage and they may insist 
upon working at what suits their taste, but they do 
work and work hard; which after all is the point. 
Madame Goujon took me through several of the ouv- 
roirs which her society had founded to teach the poor 
widows — whose pension is far inferior to the often 
brief allocation — a number of new occupations under 
competent teachers. 

Certainly these young benefactors had exercised all 
their ingenuity. Some of the women, of course, had 
been fit for nothing but manual labor, and these they 
had placed as scrub-women in hospitals or as servants 
in hotels or families. But in the case of the more in- 
telligent or deft of finger no pains were being spared 
to fit them to take a good position, or, as the French 



86 THE LIVING PRESENT 

would say, "situation," in the future life of the Re- 
public. 

In a series of rooms lent to the society by one of 
the great dressmakers, I saw keen-looking women of 
all ages learning to retouch photographs, to wind 
bobbins by electricity, to dress hair and fashion wigs, 
to engrave music scores, articulate artificial limbs, 
make artificial flowers, braces for wounded arms and 
legs, and artificial teeth! Others are taught nursing, 
bookkeeping, stenography, dentistry. 

One of Madame Goujon's most picturesque revivals 
is the dressing of dolls. Before the Franco-Prus- 
sian war this great industry belonged to France. Ger- 
many took it away from France while she was pros- 
trate, monopolizing the doll trade of the world, and the 
industry almost ceased at its ancient focus. Madame 
Goujon was one of the first to see the opportunity 
for revival in France, and with Valentine Thompson 
and Madame Verone, to mention but two of her rivals, 
was soon employing hundreds of women. A large 
room on the ground floor of M. Reinach's hotel is 
given over as a storeroom for dolls, all irreproachably 
dressed and indisputably French. 

It will take a year or two of practice and the co- 
operation of male talent after the war to bring the 
French doll up to the high standard attained by the 
Germans throughout forty years of plodding effi- 
ciency. The prettiest dolls I saw were those arrayed 
in the different national costumes of Europe, particu- 
larly those that still retain the styles of musical com- 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 87 

edy. After those rank the Red Cross nurses, particu- 
larly those that wear the blue veil over the white. And 
I never saw in real life such superb, such imper- 
turbable brides. 



Another work in which Madame Goujon is inter- 
ested and which certainly is as picturesque is Le Bon 
Gite. The gardens of the Tuilleries when regarded 
from the quay present an odd appearance these days. 
One sees row after row of little huts, models of the 
huts the English Society of Friends have built in the 
devastated valley of the Marne. Where hundreds of 
families were formerly living in damp cellars or in 
the ruins of large buildings, wherever they could find a 
sheltering wall, the children dying of exposure, there 
are now a great number of these portable huts where 
families may be dry and protected from the elements, 
albeit somewhat crowded. 

The object of Le Bon Gite is to furnish these little 
temporary homes — for real houses cannot be built 
until the men come back from the war — and these 
models in the Tuilleries Gardens show to the visitor 
what they can do in the way of furnishing a home 
that will accommodate a woman and two children, 
for three hundred francs (sixty dollars). 

It seems incredible, but I saw the equipment of 
several of these little shelters (which contain several 
rooms) and I saw the bills. They contained a bed, 
two chairs, a table, a buffet, a stove, kitchen furnish- 



88 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ings, blankets, linen, and crockery. There were even 
window curtains. The railway authorities had re- 
duced freight rates for their benefit fifty per cent. ; and 
at that time (July, 191 6) they had rescued the poor 
of four wrecked villages from reeking cellars and 
filthy straw and given some poor poilus a home to 
come to during their six days' leave of absence from 
the Front. 

The Marquise de Ganay and the Comtesse de Bryas, 
two of the most active members, are on duty in the 
offices of their neat little exhibition for several hours 
every day, and it was becoming one of the cheerful 
sights of Paris. 

There is little left of the Tuilleries to-day to recall 
the ornate splendors of the Second Empire, when the 
Empress Eugenie held her court there, and gave gar- 
den parties under the oaks and the chestnuts. There is 
a vast chasm between the pomp of courts and huts fur- 
nished for three hundred francs for the miserable 
victims of the war; but that chasm, to be sure, was 
bridged by the Commune and this war has shown 
those that have visited the Military Zone that a palace 
makes a no more picturesque ruin than a village. 



VT 

A more curious contrast was a concert given one 
afternoon in the Tuilleries Gardens for the purpose 
of raising money for one of the war relief organiza- 
tions. Madame Paul Dupuy asked me if I would help 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 89 

her take two blind soldiers to listen to it. We drove 
first out to Reuilly to the Quinze Vingts, a large estab- 
lishment where the Government has established hun- 
dreds of their war blind (who are being taught a 
score of new trades), and took the two young 
fellows who were passed out to us. The youngest 
was twenty-one, a flat- faced peasant boy, whose eyes 
had been destroyed by the explosion of a pistol close 
to his face. The older man, who may have been 
twenty-six, had a fine, thin, dark face and an expres- 
sion of fixed melancholy. He had lost his sight from 
shock. Both used canes and when we left the car at 
the entrance to the Tuilleries we were obliged to guide 
them. 

The garden was a strange assortment of fashion- 
able women, many of them bearing the highest titles 
in France, and poilus in their faded uniforms, nearly 
all maimed — reformes, mutiles! The younger of our 
charges laughed uproariously, with the other boys, at 
the comic song, but my melancholy charge never 
smiled, and later when, under the thawing influence 
of tea, he told us his story, I was not surprised. 

He had been the proprietor before the war of a 
little business in the North, prosperous and happy 
in his little family of a wife and two children. His 
mother was dead but his father and sister lived close 
by. War came and he left for the Front confident 
that his wife would run the business. It was only a 
few months later that he heard his wife had run 
away with another man, that the shop was aban- 



9P THE LIVING PRESENT 

doned, and the children had taken refuge with his 
father. 

Then came the next blow. His sister died of suc- 
cessive shocks and his father was paralyzed. Then 
he lost his sight. His children were living anyhow 
with neighbors in the half ruined village, and he was 
learning to make brushes. 

So much for the man's tragedy in war time. It is 
said that as time goes on there are more of them. 
On the other hand, during the first year, when the 
men were not allowed to go home, they formed abid- 
ing connections with women in the rear of the army, 
and when the six days' leave was granted preferred 
to take these ladies on a little jaunt than return to 
the old drab existence at home. 

These are what may be called the by-products of 
war, but they may exercise a serious influence on a 
nation's future. When the hundreds of children born 
in the North of France, who are half English, or half 
Scotch, or half Irish, or half German, or half Indian, 
or half Moroccan, grow up and begin to drift about 
and mingle with the general life of the nation, the 
result may be that we shall have been the last genera- 
tion to see a race that however diversified was reason- 
ably proud of its purity. 



VII 
MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued) 



I HAD gone to Lyons to see the war relief work of 
that flourishing city and Madame Goujon went 
South at the same time to visit her husband's people. 
We agreed to meet in the little town of Bourg la 
Bresse, known to the casual tourist for its church 
erected in the sixteenth century by Margaret of 
Austria and famous for the carvings on its tombs. 

Otherwise it is a picturesque enlarged village with 
a meandering stream that serves as an excuse for fine 
bridges ; high- walled gardens, ancient trees, and many 
quaint old buildings. 

Not that I saw anything in detail. The Mayor, 
M. Loiseau, and Madame Goujon met me at the sta- 
tion, and my ride to the various hospitals must have 
resembled the triumphal progress of chariots in an- 
cient Rome. The population leaped right and left, 
the children even scrambling up the walls as we flew 
through the narrow winding streets. It was apparent 
that the limited population of Bourg did not in the 
least mind being scattered by their Mayor, for the 
children shrieked with delight, and although you see 

91 



92 THE LIVING PRESENT 

few smiles in the provinces of France these days, and 
far more mourning than in Paris, at least we encoun- 
tered no frowns. 

The heroine of Bourg is Madame Dugas. Once 
more to repeat history: Before the war Madame 
Dugas, being a woman of fashion and large wealth, 
lived the usual life of her class. She had a chateau 
near Bourg for the autumn months : hunting and 
shooting before 19 14 were as much the fashion on 
the large estates of France as in England. She had 
a villa on the Rivera, a hotel in Paris, and a cot- 
tage at Dinard. But as soon as war broke out all 
these establishments were either closed or placed at 
the disposal of the Government. She cleaned out a 
large hotel in Bourg and installed as many beds as it 
was possible to buy at the moment. Then she sent 
word that she was ready to accommodate a certain 
number of wounded and asked for nurses and 
surgeons. 

The Government promptly took advantage of her 
generous offer, and her hospital was so quickly filled 
with wounded men that she was obliged to take over 
and furnish another large building. This soon over- 
flowing as well as the military hospitals of the dis- 
trict, she looked about in vain for another house large 
enough to make extensive installations worth while. 

During all those terrible months of the war, when 
the wounded arrived in Bourg by every train, and 
household after household put on its crepe, there was 
one great establishment behind its lofty walls that 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 93 

took no more note of the war than if the newspapers 
that never passed its iron gates were giving daily 
extracts from ancient history. This was the Convent 
de la Visitation. Its pious nuns had taken the vow 
never to look upon the face of man. If, as they paced 
under the great oaks of their close, or the stately 
length of their cloisters telling their beads, or medi- 
tating on the negation of earthly existence and the 
perfect joys of the future, they heard an echo of the 
conflict that was shaking Europe, it was only to utter 
a prayer that the souls of those who had obeyed the 
call of their country and fallen gloriously as French- 
men should rest in peace. Not for a moment did 
the idea cross their gentle minds that any mortal force 
short of invasion by the enemy could bring them into 
contact with it. 

But that force was already in possession of Bourg. 
Madame Dugas was a woman of endless resource. 
Like many another woman in this war the moment 
her executive faculties, long dormant, were stirred, 
that moment they began to develop like the police 
microbes in fevered veins. 

She had visited that convent. She knew that its 
great walls sheltered long rooms and many of them. 
It would make an ideal hospital and she determined 
that a hospital it should be. 

There was but one recourse. The Pope. Would 
she dare? People wondered. She did. The Pope, 
who knew that wounded men cannot wait, granted 
the holy nuns a temporary dispensation from their 



94 THE LIVING PRESENT 

vows; and when I walked through the beautiful Con- 
vent of the Visitation with Madame Dugas, Madame 
Goujon, and M. Loiseau, there were soldiers under 
every tree and nuns were reading to them. 

Nuns were also nursing those still in the wards, for 
nurses are none too plentiful in France even yet, and 
Madame Dugas had stipulated for the nuns as well as 
for the convent. 

It was a southern summer day. The grass was 
green. The ancient trees were heavy with leaves. 
Younger and more graceful trees drooped from the 
terrace above a high wall in the rear. The sky was 
blue. The officers, the soldiers, looked happy, the 
nuns placid. It was an oasis in the desert of war. 

I leave obvious ruminations to the reader. 

When I met Madame Dugas, once more I wondered 
if all Frenchwomen who were serving or sorrowing 
were really beautiful or if it were but one more in- 
stance of the triumph of clothes. Madame Dugas 
is an infirmiere major, and over her white linen veil 
flowed one of bright blue, transparent and fine. She 
wore the usual white linen uniform with the red 
cross on her breast, but back from her shoulders as 
she walked through the streets with us streamed a 
long dark blue cloak. She is a very tall, very slender 
woman, with a proud and lofty head, a profile of that 
almost attenuated thinness that one sees only on a 
Frenchwoman, and only then when the centuries have 
done the chiseling. As we walked down those long, 
narrow, twisted streets of Bourg between the high 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 95 

walls with the trees sweeping over the coping, she 
seemed to me the most strikingly beautiful woman I 
had ever seen. But whether I shall still think so if I 
see her one of these days in a Paris ballroom I have 
not the least idea. 

Madame Dugas runs three hospitals at her own 
expense and is her own committee. Like the rest of 
the world she expected the war to last three months, 
and like the rest of her countrywomen who immedi- 
ately offered their services to the state she has no 
intention of resigning until what is left of the armies 
are in barracks once more. She lives in a charming 
old house in Bourg, roomy and well furnished and 
with a wild and classic garden below the terrace at 
the back. (Some day I shall write a story about that 
house and garden.) Here she rests when she may, 
and here she gave us tea. 

One wonders if these devoted Frenchwomen will 
have anything left of their fortunes if the war con- 
tinues a few years longer. Madame Dugas made no 
complaint, but as an example of the increase in her 
necessary expenditures since 1914 she mentioned the 
steadily rising price of chickens. They had cost two 
francs at the beginning of the war and were now 
ten. I assumed that she gave her grands blesses 
chicken broth, which is more than they get in most 
hospitals. 

Many of the girls who had danced in her salons 
two years before, and even their younger sisters, who 
had had no chance to "come out," are helping Madame 



96 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Dugas, both as nurses and in many practical ways; 
washing and doing other work of menials as. cheer- 
fully as they ever played tennis or rode in la chasse. 



ii 

Curiously enough, the next woman whose work has 
made her notable, that Madame Goujon took me to see, 
was very much like Madame Dugas in appearance, cer- 
tainly of the same type. 

Val de Grace is the oldest military hospital in Paris. 
It covers several acres and was begun by Louis XIII 
and finished by Napoleon. Before the war it was run 
entirely by men, but one by one or group by group 
these men, all reservists, were called out and it be- 
came a serious problem how to keep it up to its stand- 
ard. Of course women were all very well as nurses, 
but it took strong men and many of them to cook 
for thousands of wounded, and there was the problem 
of keeping the immense establishment of many build- 
ings well swept and generally clean. But the men 
had to go, re formes were not strong enough for the 
work, every bed was occupied — one entire building 
by tuberculars — and they must both eat and suffer in 
sanitary conditions. 

Once more they were obliged to have recourse to 
Woman. 

Madame Olivier, like Madame Dugas a dame du 
monde and an infirmiere major, went to one of the 
hospitals at the Front on the day war broke out, 



MADAME PIERRE GOUJON 97 

nursed under fire, of course, but displayed so much 
original executive ability as well as willingness to do 
anything to help, no matter what, that she was soon 
put in charge of the wounded on trains. After many 
trips, during which she showed her uncommon talent 
'for soothing the wounded, making them comfortable 
' even when they were packed like sardines on the floor, 
and bringing always some sort of order out of the 
chaos of those first days, she was invited to take hold 
of the problem of Val de Grace. 

She had solved it when I paid my visit with 
Madame Goujon. She not only had replaced all the 
men nurses and attendants with women but was train- 
ing others and sending them off to military hospitals 
suffering from the same sudden depletions as Val de 
Grace. She also told me that three women do the 
work of six men formerly employed, and that they 
finished before ten in the morning, whereas the men 
never finished. The hospital when she arrived had 
been in a condition such as men might tolerate but 
certainly no woman. I walked through its weary 
miles (barring the tuberculosis wards) and I never 
saw a hospital look more sanitarily span. 

But the kitchen was the show place of Val de Grace, 
little as the women hard at work suspected it. Where 
Madame Olivier found those giantesses I cannot imag- 
ine; certainly not in a day. She must have sifted 
France for them. They looked like peasant women 
and no doubt they were. Only the soil could produce 
such powerful cart-horse females. 



98 THE LIVING PRESENT 

And only such cart-horses could have cooked in 
the great kitchen of Val de Grace. On a high range 
that ran the length of the room were copper pots as 
large as vats, full of stew, and these the Brobdinagians 
stirred with wooden implements that appeared to my 
shattered senses as large as spades. No doubt they 
were of inferior dimensions, but even so they were 
formidable. How those women stirred and stirred 
those steaming messes ! I never shall forget it. And 
they could also move those huge pots about, those ter- 
rible females. I thought of the French Revolution. 
- Madame Olivier, ruling all this force, giantesses 
included, with a rod of iron, stood there in the entrance 
of the immaculate kitchen looking dainty and out of 
place, with her thin proud profile, her clear dark skin, 
beautifully tinted in the cheeks, her seductive infirmiere 
uniform. But she has accomplished one of the minor 
miracles of the war. 

I wonder if all these remarkable women of France 
will be decorated one of these days? They have 
earned the highest citations, but perhaps they have 
merely done their duty as Frenchwomen. Cest la 
guerre. 



VIII 
VALENTINE THOMPSON 



FORTUNATE are those women who not only are 
able to take care of themselves but of their de- 
pendents during this long period of financial depres- 
sion ; still more fortunate are those who, either wealthy 
or merely independent, are able both to stand between 
the great mass of unfortunates and starvation and to 
serve their country in old ways and new. 

More fortunate still are the few who, having made 
for themselves by their talents and energy a position 
of leadership before the war, were immediately able 
to carry their patriotic plans into effect. 

In March, 19 14, Mile. Valentine Thompson, al- 
ready known as one of the most active of the younger 
feminists, and distinctly the most brilliant, established 
a weekly newspaper which she called La Vie Fem- 
inine. The little journal had a twofold purpose: to 
offer every sort of news and encouragement to the 
by-no-means-flourishing party and to give advice, 
assistance, and situations to women out of work. 

Mile. Thompson's father at the moment was in the 
Cabinet, holding the portfolio of Ministre du Com- 

99 



ioo THE LIVING PRESENT 

merce. Her forefathers on either side had for gen- 
erations been in public life. She and her grandmother 
had both won a position with their pen and therefore 
moved not only in the best political but the best liter- 
ary society of Paris. Moreover Mile. Thompson had 
a special penchant for Americans and knew more or 
less intimately all of any importance who lived in 
Paris or visited it regularly. Mrs. Tuck, the wealthiest 
American living in France — it has been her home for 
thirty years and she and her husband have spent a 
fortune on charities — was one of her closest friends. 
All Americans who went to Paris with any higher 
purpose than buying clothes or entertaining duchesses 
at the Ritz, took letters to her. Moreover, she is by 
common consent, and without the aid of widow's bon- 
net or Red Cross uniform, one of the handsomest 
women in Paris. She is of the Amazon type, with dark 
eyes and hair, a fine complexion, regular features, any 
expression she chooses to put on, and she is always the 
well-dressed Parisienne in detail as well as in effect. 
Her carriage is haughty and dashing, her volubility 
racial, her enthusiasm, while it lasts, bears down every 
obstacle, and her nature is imperious. She must hold 
the center of the stage and the reins of power. I 
should say that she was the most ambitious woman in 
France. 

She is certainly one of its towering personalities 
and if she does not stand out at the end of the war 
as Woman and Her Achievements personified it will 
be because she has the defects of her genius. Her 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 101 

restless ambition and her driving energy hurl her 
headlong into one great relief work after another, until 
she has undertaken more than any mere mortal can 
carry through in any given space of time. She is there- 
fore in danger of standing for no one monumental 
work (as will be the happy destiny of Mile. Javal, for 
instance), although no woman's activities or sacrifices 
will have been greater. 

It may be imagined that such a woman when she 
started a newspaper would be in a position to induce 
half the prominent men and women in France either 
to write for it or to give interviews, and this she did, 
of course; she has a magnificent publicity sense. The 
early numbers of La Vie Feminine were almost choked 
with names known to "tout Paris." It flourished in 
both branches, and splendid offices were opened on the 
Avenue des Champs Elysees. Women came for ad- 
vice and employment and found both, for Mile. 
Thompson is as sincere in her desire to help the less 
fortunate of her sex as she is in her feminism. 

ii 

Then came the War. 

Mile. Thompson's plans were formed in a day, her 
Committees almost as quickly. La Vie Feminine 
opened no less than seven ouvroirs, where five hundred 
women were given work. When the refugees began 
pouring in she was among the first to ladle out soup 
and deplete her wardrobe. She even went to the 
hastily formed hospitals in Paris and offered her serv- 



102 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ices. As she was not a nurse she was obliged to do 
the most menial work, which not infrequently con- 
sisted in washing the filthy poilus wounded after weeks 
of fighting without a bath or change of clothing. 
Sometimes the dirt-caked soldiers were natives of 
Algiers. But she performed her task with her accus- 
tomed energy and thoroughness, and no doubt the 
mere sight of her was a God-send to those men who 
had for so long looked upon nothing but blood and 
death and horrors. 

Then came the sound of the German guns thirty 
kilometers from Paris. The Government decided to 
go to Bordeaux. Mile. Thompson's father insisted 
that his daughter accompany himself and her mother. 
At first she refused. What should she do with the 
five hundred women in her ouvroirs, the refugees she 
fed daily? She appealed to Ambassador Herrick. 
But our distinguished representative shook his head. 
He had trouble enough on his hands. The more beau- 
tiful young women who removed themselves from 
Paris before the Boche entered it the simpler would 
be the task of the men forced to remain. It was seri- 
ous enough that her even more beautiful sister had 
elected to remain with her husband, whose duties for- 
bade him to flee. Go, Mademoiselle, and go quickly. 

Mile. Thompson yielded but she made no precipi- 
tate flight. Collecting the most influential and gen- 
erous members of her Committees, she raised the sum 
needed for a special train of forty cars. Into this she 
piled the five hundred women of her ouvroirs and 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 103 

their children, a large number of refugees, and an 
orphan asylum — one thousand in all. When it had 
steamed out of Paris and was unmistakably on its 
way to the South she followed. But not to sit fuming 
in Bordeaux waiting for General Joffre to settle the 
fate of Paris. She spent the three or four weeks of 
her exile in finding homes or situations for her thou- 
sand helpless charges, in Blanquefort, Lourdes, Bay- 
onne, Marseilles, Bordeaux and other southern cities 
and small towns, forming in each a Committee to look 
out for them. 

in 

Soon after her return to Paris she conceived and 
put into operation the idea of an ficole Hoteliere. 

Thousands of Germans and Austrians, employed as 
waiters or in other capacities about the hotels, either 
had slunk out of Paris just before war was declared 
or were interned. Even the Swiss had been recalled 
to protect their frontiers. The great hotels supplied 
the vacancies with men hastily invited from neutral 
countries, very green and very exorbitant in their 
demands. Hundreds of the smaller hotels were 
obliged to close, although the smallest were, as ever, 
run by the wife of the proprietor, and her daughters 
when old enough. 

But that was only half of the problem. After the 
war all these hotels must open to accommodate the 
tourists who would flock to Europe. The Swiss of 
course could be relied upon to take the first train to 



104 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Paris after peace was declared, but the Germans and 
Austrians had been as thick in France as flies on a 
battlefield, and it will be a generation before either 
will fatten on Latin credulity again. Even if the peo- 
ple of the Central Powers revolt and set up a republic 
it will be long before the French, who are anything 
but volatile in their essence, will be able to look at a 
Boche without wanting to spit on him or to kick him 
out of the way as one would a vicious cur. 

To Mile. Thompson, although men fall at her feet, 
the answer to every problem is Woman. 

She formed another powerful Committee, roused 
the enthusiasm of the Touring Club de France, rented 
a dilapidated villa in Passy, and after enlisting the 
practical sympathies of furnishers, decorators, "maga- 
zins," and persons generally whose business it is to 
make a house comfortable and beautiful, she adver- 
tised not only in the Paris but in all the provincial 
newspapers for young women of good family whose 
marriage prospects had been ruined by the war and 
who would wish to fit themselves scientifically for the 
business of hotel keeping. Each should be educated 
in every department from directrice to scullion. 

The answers were so numerous that she was forced 
to deny many whose lovers had been killed or whose 
parents no longer could hope to provide them with the 
indispensable dot. The repairs and installations of the 
villa having been rushed, it was in running order and 
its dormitories were filled by some thirty young women 
in an incredibly short time. Mile. Jacquier, who had 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 105 

presided over a somewhat similar school in Switzer- 
land, was installed as directrice. 

Each girl, in addition to irreproachable recom- 
mendations and the written consent of her parents, 
must pay seventy francs a month, bring a specified 
amount of underclothing, etc. ; and, whatever her 
age or education, must, come prepared to submit 
to the discipline of the school. In return they were 
to be taught not only how to fill all positions in a 
hotel, but the scientific principles of domestic economy, 
properties of food combined with the proportions 
necessary to health, bookkeeping, English, correspond- 
ence, geography, arithmetic — "calcul rapide" — gym- 
nastics, deportment, hygiene. 

Moreover, when at the end of the three months' 
course they had taken their diplomas, places would 
be found for them. If they failed to take their 
diplomas and could not afford another course, still 
would places, but of an inferior order, be provided. 
After the first students arrived it became known that 
an ex-pupil without place and without money could 
always find a temporary refuge there. Even if she had 
"gone wrong" she might come and ask for advice and 
help. 

IV 

When I arrived in Paris I had two letters to Mile. 
Thompson and after I had been there about ten days 
I went with Mr. Jaccaci to call on her at the offices 
of La Vie Feminine, and found them both sumptuous 



io6 THE LIVING PRESENT 

and a hive of activities. In the course of the rapid 
give-and-take conversation — if it can be called that 
when one sits tight with the grim intention of pinning 
Mile. Thompson to one subject long enough to ex- 
tract definite information from her — we discovered 
that she had translated one of my books. Neither of 
us could remember which it was, although I had a 
dim visualization of the correspondence, but it formed 
an immediate bond. Moreover — another point I had 
quite forgotten — when her friend, Madame Leverriere, 
had visited the United States some time previously to 
put Mile. Thompson's dolls on the market, I had been 
asked to write something in favor of the work for the 
New York Times. Madame Leverriere, who was 
present, informed me enthusiastically that I had helped 
her enormement, and there was another bond. 

The immediate consequence was that, although I 
could get little that was coherent from Mile. Thomp- 
son's torrent of classic French, I was invited to be an 
inmate of the £cole Hoteliere at Passy. I had men- 
tioned that although I was comfortable at the luxuri- 
ous Hotel de Crillon, still when I went upstairs and 
closed my door I was in the atmosphere of two years 
ago. And I must have constant atmosphere, for my 
time was limited. I abominated pensions, and from 
what I had heard of French families who took in a 
"paying guest," or, in their tongue, dame pensiomtaire, 
I had concluded that the total renouncement of atmos- 
phere was the lesser evil. 

Would I go out and see the ficole Feminine? I 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 107 

would. It sounded interesting and a visit committed 
me to nothing. Mile. Thompson put it charmingly. 
I should be conferring a favor. There was a guest 
chamber and no guest for the pupils to practice on. 
And it would be an honor, etc. 

We drove out to Passy and I found the ficole Fem- 
inine in the Boulevard Beausejour all and more than 
Mile. Thompson had taken the time to portray in 
detail. The entrance was at the side of the house 
and one approached it through a large gateway which 
led to a cul-de-sac lined with villas and filled with 
beautiful old trees that enchanted my eye. I cursed 
those trees later but at the moment they almost de- 
cided me before I entered the house. 

The interior, having been done by enthusiastic ad- 
mirers of Mile. Thompson, was not only fresh and 
modern but artis»tic and striking. The salon was pan- 
eled, but the dining-room had been decorated by 
Poiret with great sprays and flowers splashed on the 
walls, picturesque vegetables that had parted with their 
humility between the garden and the palette. Through 
a glass partition one saw the shining kitchen with 
its large modern range, its rows and rows of the most 
expensive utensils — all donations by the omnifarious 
army of Mile. Thompson's devotees. 

Behind the salon was the schoolroom, with its 
blackboard, its four long tables, its charts for food 
proportions. All the girls wore blue linen aprons that 
covered them from head to foot. 

I followed Mile. Thompson up the winding stair 



io8 THE LIVING PRESENT 

and was shown the dormitories, the walls decorated 
as gaily as if for a bride, but otherwise of a severe 
if comfortable simplicity. Every cot was as neat as a 
new hospital's in the second year of the war, and 
there was an immense lavatory on each floor. 

Then I was shown the quarters destined for me if I 
would so far condescend, etc. There was quite a large 
bedroom, with a window looking out over a mass of 
green, and the high terraces of houses beyond; the 
garden of a neighbor was just below. There was a 
very large wardrobe, with shelves that pulled out, and 
one of those wash-stands where a minute tank is rilled 
every morning (when not forgotten) and the bowl is 
tipped into a noisy tin just below. 

The room was in a little hallway of its own which 
terminated in a large bathroom with two enormous 
tubs. Of course the water was heated in a copper 
boiler situated between the tubs, for although the 
ficole Feminine was modern it was not too modern. 
The point, however, was that I should have my daily 
bath, and that the entire school would delight in 
waiting on me. 

It did not take me any time whatever to decide. I 
might not be comfortable but I certainly should be 
interested. I moved in that day. Mile. Thompson's 
original invitation to be her guest (in return for the 
small paragraph I had written about the dolls) was 
not to be entertained for a moment. I wished to feel 
at liberty to stay as long as I liked ; and it was finally 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 109 

agreed that at the end of the week Mile. Thompson 
and Mile. Jacquier should decide upon the price. 



I remained something like three months. There 
were three trolley lines, a train, a cab-stand, a good 
shopping street within a few steps, the place itself was 
a haven of rest after my long days in Paris meeting 
people by the dozen and taking notes of their work, 
and the cooking was the most varied and the most 
delicate I have ever eaten anywhere. A famous re- 
tired chef had offered his services three times a week 
for nothing and each girl during her two weeks in 
the kitchen learned how to prepare eggs in forty dif- 
ferent ways, to say nothing of sauces and delicacies 
that the Ritz itself could not afford. I received the 
benefit of all the experiments. I could also amuse 
myself looking through the glass partition at the 
little master chef, whose services thousands could 
not command, rushing about the kitchen, waving his 
arms, tearing his hair, shrieking against the incredible 
stupidity of young females whom heaven had not 
endowed with the genius for cooking; and who, no 
doubt, had never cooked anything at all before they 
answered the advertisement of Mile. Thompson. 
Few that had not belonged to well-to-do families 
whose heavy work had been done by servants. 

A table was given me in a corner by myself and 
the other tables were occupied by the girls who at 



no THE LIVING PRESENT 

the moment were not serving their fortnight in the 
kitchen or as waitresses. These were treated as cere- 
moniously (being practiced on) as I was, although 
their food, substantial and plentiful, was not as choice 
as mine. I could have had all my meals served in 
my rooms if I had cared to avail myself of the privi- 
lege; but not I! If you take but one letter to Society 
in France you may, if you stay long enough, and are 
not personally disagreeable, meet princesses, duchesses, 
marquises, countesses, by the dozen; but to meet the 
coldly aloof and suspicious bourgeoisie, who hate the 
sight of a stranger, -particularly the petite bourgeoisie, 
is more difficult than for a German to explain the 
sudden lapse of his country into barbarism. Here was 
a unique opportunity, and I held myself to be very 
fortunate. 

Was I comfortable? Judged by the American 
standard, certainly not. My bed was soft enough, and 
my breakfast was brought to me at whatever hour I 
rang for it. But, as was the case all over Paris, the 
central heat had ceased abruptly on its specified date 
and I nearly froze. During the late afternoon and 
evenings all through May and the greater part of 
June I sat wrapped in my traveling cloak and went 
to bed as soon as the evening ceremonies of my two 
fortnightly attendants were over. I might as well 
have tried to interrupt the advance of a German taube 
as to interfere with any of Mile. Jacquier's ortho- 
doxies. 

Moreover four girls, with great chattering, invari- 



VALENTINE THOMPSON m 

ably prepared my bath — which circumstances decided 
me to take at night — and I had to wait until all their 
confidences — exchanged as they sat in a row on the 
edge of the two tubs — were over. Then something 
happened to the boiler, and as all the plumbers were 
in the trenches, and ubiquitous woman seemed to have 
stopped short in her new accomplishments at mending 
pipes, I had to wait until a permissionnaire came home 
on his six days' leave, and that was for five weeks. 
More than once I decided to go back to the Crillon, 
where the bathrooms are the last cry in luxury, for I 
detest the makeshift bath, but by this time I was too 
fascinated by the ficole to tear myself away. 

Naturally out of thirty girls there were some an- 
tagonistic personalities, and two or three I took such 
an intense dislike to that I finally prevailed upon Mile. 
Jacquier to keep them out of my room and away from 
my table. But the majority of the students were 
"regular girls." At first I was as welcome in the 
dining-room as a Prussian sentinel, and they ex- 
changed desultory remarks in whispers; but after a 
while they grew accustomed to me and chattered like 
magpies. I could hear them again in their dormitories 
until about half -past ten at night. Mile. Jacquier asked 
me once with some anxiety if I minded, and I assured 
her that I liked it. This was quite true, for these 
rirls, all so eager and natural, and even gay, despite 
the tragedy in the background of many, seemed to me 
the brightest spot in Paris. 

It is true that I remonstrated, and frequently, 



112 THE LIVING PRESENT 

against the terrific noise they made every morning 
at seven o'clock when they clamped across the uncar- 
peted hall and down the stairs. But although they 
would tiptoe for a day they would forget again, and 
I finally resigned myself. I also did my share in 
training them to wait on a guest in her room! Not 
one when I arrived had anything more than a theo- 
retical idea of what to do beyond making a bed, sweep- 
ing, and dusting. I soon discovered that the more 
exacting I was — and there were times when I was 
exceeding stormy — the better Mile. Jacquier was 
pleased. 

She had her hands full. Her discipline was superb 
and she addressed each with invariable formality as 

"Mademoiselle •"; but they were real girls, full 

of vitality, and always on the cdgt of rebellion. I 
listened to some stinging rebukes delivered by Mile. 
Jacquier when she would arise in her wrath in the 
dining-room and address them collectively. She 
knew how to get under their skin, for they would 
blush, hang their heads, and writhe. 

VI 

But Mile. Jacquier told me that what really kept 
them in order was the influence of Mile. Thompson. 
At first she came every week late in the afternoon 
to give them a talk; then every fortnight; then — oh 
la! la! 

I listened to one or two of these talks. The girls 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 113 

sat in a semicircle, hardly breathing, their eyes filling 
with tears whenever Mile. Thompson, who sat at a 
table at the head of the room, played on that particular 
key. 

I never thought Valentine Thompson more remark- 
able than during this hour dedicated to the tuning 
and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told 
me that she held their hearts in her hands when she 
talked and that they would follow her straight to the 
battlefield. She, herself, assumed her most serious 
and exalted expression. I have never heard any one 
use more exquisite French. Not for a moment did 
she talk down to those girls of a humbler sphere. She 
lifted them to her own. Her voice took on deeper 
tones, but she always stopped short of being dramatic. 
French people of all classes are too keen and clear- 
sighted and intelligent to be taken in by theatrical 
tricks, and Mile. Thompson made no mistakes. Her 
only mistake was in neglecting these girls later on for 
other new enterprises that claimed her ardent imagi- 
nation. 

She talked, I remember, of patriotism, of morale, of 
their duty to excel in their present studies that they 
might be of service not only to their impoverished fam- 
ilies but to their beloved France. It was not so much 
what she said as the lovely way in which she said it, 
her impressive manner and appearance, her almost 
overwhelming but, for the occasion, wholly democratic 
personality. 

Once a week Mile. Thompson and the heads of the 



ii 4 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Touring Club de France had a breakfast at the ficole 
and tables were laid even in the salon. I was always 
somebody's guest upon these Tuesdays, unless I was 
engaged elsewhere, and had, moreover, been for years 
a member of the Touring Club. Some of the most 
distinguished men and women of Paris came to the 
breakfasts : statesmen, journalists, authors, artists, 
people of le beau monde, visiting English and Ameri- 
cans as well as French people of note. Naturally the 
students became expert waitresses and chasseurs as 
well as cooks. 

Altogether I should have only the pleasantest mem- 
ories of the ficole Feminine had it not been for the 
mosquitoes. I do not believe that New Jersey ever 
had a worse record than Paris that summer. Every 
leaf of every one of those beautiful trees beyond my 
window, over whose tops I used to gaze at the air- 
planes darting about on the lookout for taubes, was 
an incubator. I exhausted the resources of two chem- 
ist shops in Passy and one in Paris. I tried every 
invention, went to bed reeking with turpentine, and 
burned evil-smelling pastiles. Mile. Jacquier came in 
every night and slew a dozen with a towel as scien- 
tifically as she did everything else. All of no avail. 
At one time I was so spotted that I had to wear a still 
more heavily spotted veil. I looked as if afflicted with 
measles. 

Oddly enough the prettiest of the students, whose 
first name was Alice, was the only one of us 
all ignored by the mosquitoes. She had red-gold hair 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 115 

and a pink and white skin of great delicacy, and she 
might have been the twin of Elsie Ferguson. A few 
of the other girls were passably good-looking but she 
was the only one with anything like beauty — which, 
it would seem, is practically confined to the noblesse 
and grande bourgeoisie in France. Next to her in 
looks came Mile. Jacquier, who if she had a dot would 
have been snapped up long since. 

Alice had had two fiances (selected by her mother) 
and both young officers ; one, an Englishman, had been 
killed in the first year of the war. She was only 
eighteen. At one time the northern town she lived in 
was threatened by the Germans, and Mrs. Vail of 
Boston (whose daughter is so prominent at the Ameri- 
can Fund for French Wounded headquarters in Paris), 
being on the spot and knowing how much there would 
be left of the wildrose innocence that bloomed visibly 
on Alice's plump cheeks, whisked her off to London. 
There she remained until she heard of Mile. Thomp- 
son's School, when Mrs. Vail brought her to Paris. 
As she was not only pretty and charming but intel- 
ligent, I exerted myself to find her a place before I 
left, and I believe she is still with Mrs. Thayer in the 
Hotel Cecilia. 

VII 

The ficole Feminine, I am told, is no more. Mile. 
Thompson found it impossible to raise the necessary 
money to keep it going. The truth is, I fancy, that 
she approached generous donators for too many dif- 



n6 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ferent objects and too many times. Perhaps the ficole 
will be reopened later on. If not it will always be a 
matter of regret not only for France but for Valentine 
Thompson's own sake that she did not concentrate on 
this useful enterprise; it would have been a definite 
monument in the center of her shifting activities. 

I have no space to give even a list of her manifold 
ceuvres, but one at least bids fair to be associated 
permanently with her name. What is now known in 
the United States as the French Heroes' Fund was 
started by Mile. Thompson under the auspices of La 
Vie Feminine to help the reformes rebuild their lives. 
The greater number could not work at their old avoca- 
tions, being minus an arm or a leg. But they learned 
to make toys and many useful articles, and worked at 
home; in good weather, sitting before their doors in 
the quiet village street. A vast number of these Mile. 
Thompson and various members of her Committee 
located, tabulated, encouraged; and, once a fortnight, 
collected their work. This was either sold in Paris 
or sent to America. 

In New York Mrs. William Astor Chanler and Mr. 
John Moffat organized the work under its present title 
and raised the money to buy Lafayette's birthplace. 
They got it at a great bargain, $20,000; for a large 
number of acres were included in the purchase. An- 
other $20,000, also raised by Mr. Moffatt, repaired and 
furnished the chateau, which not only is to be a sort 
of French Mt. Vernon, with rooms dedicated to relics 
of Lafayette and the present war, as well as a memo- 



VALENTINE THOMPSON 117 

rial room for the American heroes who have fallen 
for France, but an orphanage is to be built in the 
grounds, and the repairs as well as all the other work 
is to be done by the blind and the mutilated, who will 
thus not be objects of charity but made to feel them- 
selves men once more and able to support their fam- 
ilies. The land will be rented to the reformes, the 
mutiles and the blind. 

Mile. Thompson and Mrs. Chanler, with the help 
of a powerful Committee, are pushing this work for- 
ward as rapidly as possible in the circumstances and 
no doubt it will be one of the first war meccas of the 
American tourists so long separated from their be- 
loved Europe. 

VIII 

The most insistent memory of my life in Passy at 
the Hotel Feminine is the Battle of the Somme. After 
it commenced in July I heard the great guns day 
and night for a week. That deep, steady, portentous 
booming had begun to exert a morbid fascination be- 
fore the advance carried the cannon out of my range, 
and I had an almost irresistible desire to pack up and 
follow it. The ancestral response to the old god of 
war is more persistent than any of us imagine, I 
fancy. I was close to the lines some weeks later, when 
I went into the Zone des Armees, and it is quite positive 
that not only does that dreary and dangerous region 
exert a sinister fascination but that it seems to expel 



n8 THE LIVING PRESENT 

fear from your composition. It is as if for the first 
time you were in the normal condition of life, which 
during the centuries of the ancestors to whom you owe 
your brain-cells, was war, not peace. 



IX 

MADAME WADDINGTON 



ONE has learned to associate Madame Wadding- 
ton so intimately with the glittering surface 
life of Europe that although every one knows she was 
born in New York of historic parentage, one recalls 
with something of a shock now and then that she was 
not only educated in this country but did not go to 
France to live until after the death of her father in 
1871. 

This no doubt accounts for the fact that meeting 
her for the first time one finds her unmistakably an 
American woman. Her language may be French but 
she has a directness and simplicity that no more iden- 
tifies her with a European woman of any class than 
with the well-known exigencies of diplomacy. Ma- 
dame Waddington strikes one as quite remarkably 
fearless and downright ; she appears to be as outspoken 
as she is vivacious; and as her husband had a highly 
successful career as a diplomatist, and as his debt to 
his brilliant wife is freely conceded, Madame Wad- 
dington is certainly a notable instance of the gay per- 
sistence of an intelligent American woman's person- 

119 



i2o THE LIVING PRESENT 

ality, combined with the proper proportion of acute- 
ness, quickness, and charm which force a highly con- 
ventionalized and specialized society to take her on 
her own terms. The greater number of diplomatic 
women as well as ladies-in-waiting that I have run 
across during my European or Washington episodes 
have about as much personality as a door-mat. Many 
of our own women have been admirable helpmates to 
our ambassadors, but I recall none that has played a 
great personal role in the world. Not a few have con- 
tributed to the gaiety of nations. 

Madame Waddington has had four separate careers 
quite aside from the always outstanding career of girl- 
hood. Her father was Charles King, President of 
Columbia College and son of Rufus King, second 
United States Minister to England. When she mar- 
ried M. Waddington, a Frenchman of English descent, 
and educated at Rugby and Cambridge, he was just 
entering public life. His chateau was in the Depart- 
ment of the Aisne and he was sent from there to the 
National Assembly. Two years later he was ap- 
pointed Minister of Public Instruction, and in Jan- 
uary, 1876, he was elected Senator from the Aisne. 
In December of the following year he once more en- 
tered the Cabinet as Minister of Public Instruction, 
later accepting the portfolio for Foreign Affairs. 

During this period, of course, Madame Wadding- 
ton lived the brilliant social and political life of the 
capital. M. Waddington began his diplomatic career 
in 1878 as the first Plenipotentiary of France to the 



MADAME WADDINGTOM 12 1 

Congress of Berlin. In 1883 he was sent as Ambas- 
sador Extraordinary to represent France at the coro- 
nation of Alexander III ; and it was then that Madame 
Waddington began to send history through the dip- 
lomatic pouch, and sow the seeds of that post-career 
which comes to so few widows of public men. 

Madame Waddington's letters from Russia, and 
later from England where her husband was Ambas- 
sador from 1883 to 1893 are now so famous, being 
probably in- every private library of any pretensions, 
that it would be a waste of space to give an extended 
notice of them in a book which has nothing whatever 
to do with the achievements of its heroines in art and 
letters in that vast almost-forgotten period, Before the 
War. Suffice it to say that they are among the most 
delightful epistolary contributions to modern litera- 
ture, the more so perhaps as they were written with- 
out a thought of future publication. But being a born 
woman of letters, every line she writes has the elusive 
qualities of style and charm ; and she has besides the 
selective gift of putting down on paper even to her 
own family only what is worth recording. 

When these letters were published in ScribneSs 
Magazine in 1902, eight years after M. Waddington's 
death, they gave her an instant position in the world 
of letters, which must have consoled her for the loss 
of that glittering diplomatic life she had enjoyed for 
so many years. 

Not that Madame Waddington had ever dropped 
out of society, except during the inevitable period of 



122 THE LIVING PRESENT 

mourning. In Paris up to the outbreak of the war she 
was always in demand, particularly in diplomatic cir- 
cles, by far the most interesting and kaleidoscopic in 
the European capitals. I was told that she never paid 
a visit to England without finding an invitation from 
the King and Queen at her hotel, as well as a peck of 
other invitations. 

I do not think Madame Waddington has ever been 
wealthy in our sense of the word. But, as I said be- 
fore, her career is a striking example of that most 
precious of all gifts, personality. And if she lives 
until ninety she will always be in social demand, for 
she is what is known as "good company/* She listens 
to you but you would far rather listen to her. Unlike 
many women of distinguished pasts she lives in hers 
very little. It is difficult to induce the reminiscent 
mood. She lives intensely in the present and her 
mind works insatiably upon everything in current life 
that is worth while. 

She has no vanity. Unlike many ladies of her age 
and degree in Paris she does not wear a red-brown 
wig, but her own abundant hair, as soft and white as 
cotton and not a "gray" hair in it. She is now too 
much absorbed in the war to waste time at her dress- 
makers or even to care whether her placket-hole is 
open or nof. I doubt if she ever did care much about 
dress or "keeping young," for those are instincts that 
sleep only in the grave. War or no war they are as 
much a part of the daily habit as the morning bath. 



MADAME WADDINGTON 123 

I saw abundant evidence of this immortal fact in Paris 
during the second summer of the war. 

Nevertheless, the moment Madame Waddington 
enters a room she seems to charge it with electricity. 
You see no one else and you are impatient when 
others insist upon talking. Vitality, an immense intel- 
ligence without arrogance or self-conceit, a courtesy 
which has no relation to diplomatic caution, a kindly 
tact and an unmistakable integrity, combine to make 
Madame Waddington one of the most popular women 
in Europe. 

11 

This brings me to Madame Waddington's fourth 
career. The war which has lifted so many people out 
of obscurity, rejuvenated a few dying talents, and 
given thousands their first opportunity to be useful, 
simply overwhelmed Madame Waddington with hard 
work and a multitude of new duties. If she had in- 
dulged in dreams of spending the rest of her days in 
the peaceful paths of literature when not dining out, 
they were rudely dissipated on August 1st, 19 14. 

Madame Waddington opened the Ouvroir Holo- 
phane on the 15th of August, her first object being to 
give employment and so countercheck the double 
menace of starvation and haunted idleness for at least 
fifty poor women : teachers, music-mistresses, seam- 
stresses, lace makers, women of all ages and conditions 
abruptly thrown out of work. 

Madame Waddington, speaking of them, said : "We 



124 THE LIVING PRESENT 

had such piteous cases of perfectly well-dressed, well- 
educated, gently-bred women that we hardly dared 
offer them the one- franc-fifty and 'gouter' (bowl of 
cafe-au-lait with bread and butter), which was all we 
were able to give for four hours' work in the after- 
noon. " 

However, those poor women were very thankful for 
the work and sewed faithfully on sleeping-suits and 
underclothing for poilus in the trenches and hospitals. 
Madame Waddington's friends in America responded 
to her call for help and M. Mygatt gave her rooms on 
the ground floor of his building in the Boulevard 
Haussmann. 

When the Germans were rushing on Paris and in- 
vasion seemed as inevitable as the horrors that were 
bound to follow, Mr. Herrick insisted that Madame 
Waddington and her sister Miss King, who was al- 
most helpless from rheumatism, follow the Govern- 
ment to the South. This Madame Waddington re- 
luctantly did, but returned immediately after the Battle 
of the Marne. 

It was not long before the Ouvroir Holophane out- 
grew its original proportions, and instead of the 
women coming there daily to sew, they called only 
for materials to make up at home. For this ouvroir 
(if it has managed to exist in these days of decreas- 
ing donations) sends to the Front garments of all 
sorts for soldiers ill or well, pillow-cases, sheets, sleep- 
ing-bags, slippers. 

Moreover, as soon as the men began to come home 



MADAME WADDINGTON 125 

on their six days' leave they found their way to the 
generous ouvroir on the Boulevard Haussmann, where 
Madame Waddington, or her friend Mrs. Greene 
(also an American), or Madame Mygatt, always gave 
the poor men what they needed to replace their tat- 
tered (or missing) undergarments, as well as coffee 
and bread and butter. 

The most difficult women to employ were those 
who had been accustomed to make embroidery and 
lace, as well as many who had led pampered lives in a 
small way and did not know how to sew at all. But 
one- franc-fifty stood between them and starvation and 
they learned. To-day nearly all of the younger women 
assisted by those first ouvroirs are more profitably 
employed. France has adjusted itself to a state of war 
and thousands of women are either in Government 
service and munition factories, or in the reopened 
shops and restaurants. 

in 

The Waddingtons being the great people of their 
district were, of course, looked upon by the peasant 
farmers and villagers as aristocrats of illimitable 
wealth. Therefore when the full force of the war 
struck these poor people — they were in the path of the 
Germans during the advance on Paris, and ruthlessly 
treated — they looked to Madame Waddington and her 
daughter, Madame Francis Waddington, to put them 
on their feet again. 

Francis Waddington, to whom the chateau de- 



126 THE LIVING PRESENT 

scended, was in the trenches, but his mother and wife 
did all they could, as soon as the Germans had been 
driven back, to relieve the necessities of the dazed and 
miserable creatures whose farms had been devastated 
and shops rifled or razed. Some time, by the way, 
Madame Waddington may tell the dramatic story of 
her daughter-in-law's escape. She was alone in the 
chateau with her two little boys when the Mayor of 
the nearest village dashed up with the warning that 
the Germans were six kilometers away, and the last 
train was about to leave. 

She had two automobiles, but her chauffeur had 
been mobilized and there was no petrol. She was 
dressed for dinner, but there was no time to change. 
She threw on a cloak and thinking of nothing but her 
children went off with the Mayor in hot haste to catch 
the train. From that moment on for five or six days, 
during which time she never took off her high-heeled 
slippers with their diamond buckles, until she reached 
her husband in the North, her experience was one of 
the side dramas of the war. 

I think it was early in 19 15 that Madame Wadding- 
ton wrote in Scribner's Magazine a description of her 
son's chateau as it was after the Germans had evacu- 
ated it. But the half was not told. It never can be, 
in print. Madame Huard, in her book, My Home on 
the Field of Honor, is franker than most of the cur- 
rent historians have dared to be, and the conditions 
which she too found when she returned after the 
German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of 



MADAME WADDINGTON 127 

the disgraceful and disgusting state in which these 
lovely country homes of the French were left; not by 
lawless German soldiers but by officers of the first 
rank. Madame Francis Waddington did not even run 
upstairs to snatch her jewel case, and of course she 
never saw it again. Her dresses had been taken from 
the wardrobes and slashed from top to hem by the 
swords of these incomprehensible barbarians. The 
most valuable books in the library were gutted. But 
these outrages are almost too mild to mention. 



IV 

The next task after the city ouvroir was in running 
order was to teach the countrywomen how to sew for 
the soldiers and pay them for their work. The region 
of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavily 
wooded. Few of the women had any skill with the 
needle. The two Madame Waddingtons concluded to 
show these poor women with their coarse red hands 
how to knit until their fingers grew more supple. This 
they took to very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; 
and since those early days both the Paris and country 
ouvroirs had sent (June, 191 6) twenty thousand pack- 
ages to the soldiers. Each package contained a flannel 
shirt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two 
pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of 
soap. Any donations of tobacco or rolled cigarettes 
were also included. 

This burden in the country has been augmented 



128 THE LIVING PRESENT 

heavily by refugees from the invaded districts. Of 
course they come no more these days, but while I was 
in Paris they were still pouring down, and as the 
Waddington estate was often in their line of march 
they simply camped in the park and in the garage. 
Of course they had to be clothed, fed, and generally 
assisted. 

As Madame Waddington's is not one of the pic- 
turesque ouvroirs she has found it difficult to keep it 
going, and no doubt contributes all she can spare of 
what the war has left of her own income. Moreover, 
she is on practically every important war relief com- 
mittee, sometimes as honorary president, for her name 
carries great weight, often as vice-president or as a 
member of the "conseil." After her ouvroirs the 
most important organization of which she is president 
is the Comite International de Pansements Chirurgi- 
caux des Etats Unis — in other words, surgical dress- 
ings — started by Mrs. Willard, and run actively in 
Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president. When I vis- 
ited it they were serving about seven hundred hos- 
pitals, and no doubt by this time are supplying twice 
that number. Two floors of a new apartment house, 
had been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the 
activity and shining whiteness were the last word in 
modern proficiency (I shall never use that black-sheep 
among words, efficiency, again). 

One of Madame Waddington's more persona! 
ceuvres is the amusement she, in company with her 
daughter-in-law, provides for the poilus in the village 



MADAME WADDING TON 129 

near her son's estate. Regiments are quartered there, 
either to hold themselves in readiness, or to cut down 
trees for the army. They wandered about, desolate 
and bored, until the two Madame Waddingtons fur- 
nished a reading-room, provided with letter paper and 
post-cards, books and, I hope, by this time a gramo- 
phone. Here they sit and smoke, read, or get up 
little plays. As the chateau is now occupied, by the 
staff the two patronesses are obliged to go back and 
forth from Paris, and this they do once a week at 
least. 



Madame Waddington, knowing that I was very 
anxious to see one of the cantines at the railway sta- 
tions about which so much was said, took me late one 
afternoon to St. Lazare. Into this great station, as 
into all the others, train after train hourly gives up 
its load of permissionnaires — men home on their six 
days' leave — ; men for the eclope stations ; men from 
shattered regiments, to be held at Le Bourget until 
the time comes to be sent to fill other gaps made by 
the German guns ; men who merely arrive by one train 
to take another out, but who must frequently remain 
for several hours in the depot. 

I have never entered one of these gares to take a 
train that I have not seen hundreds of soldiers enter- 
ing, leaving, waiting; sometimes lying asleep on the 
hard floor, always on the benches. It is for all who 



130 THE LIVING PRESENT 

choose to take advantage of them that these cantines 
are run, and they are open day and night. 

The one in St. Lazare had been organized in Feb- 
ruary, 191 5, by the Baronne de Berckheim (born 
Pourtales) and was still run by her in person when I 
visited it in June, 19 16. During that time she and 
her staff had taken care of over two hundred thou- 
sand soldiers. From 8 to 11 a.m. cafe-au-lait, or 
cafe noir, or bouillon, pate de foie or cheese is served. 
From 1 1 to 2 and from 6 to 9, bouillon, a plate of meat 
and vegetables, salad, cheese, fruits or compote, coffee, 
a quart of wine or beer, cigarettes. From 2 to 6 and 
after 9 p. m., bouillon, coffee, tea, pate, cheese, milk, 
lemonade, cocoa. 

The rooms in the station are a donation by the offi- 
cials, of course. The dining-room of the St. Lazare 
cantine was fitted up with several long tables, before 
which, when we arrived, every square inch of the 
benches was occupied by poilus enjoying an excellent 
meal of which beef a la mode was the piece de resist- 
ance. The Baroness Berckheim and the young girls 
helping her wore the Red Cross uniform, and they 
served the needs of the tired and hungry soldiers with 
a humble devotion that nothing but war and its awful 
possibilities can inspire. It was these nameless men 
who were saving not only France from the most brutal 
enemy of modern times but the honor of thousands 
of such beautiful and fastidious young women as 
these. No wonder they were willing and grateful to 
stand until they dropped. 



MADAME WADDINGTON 131 

It was evident, however, that their imagination 
carried them beyond man's interiorities. The walls 
were charmingly decorated not only with pictures of 
the heroes of the war but with the colored supple- 
ments of the great weekly magazines which pursue 
their even and welcome way in spite of the war. 
Above there were flags and banners, and the lights 
were very bright. Altogether there was no restaurant 
in Paris more cheerful — or more exquisitely neat in 
its kitchen. I went behind and saw the great roasts 
in their shining pans, the splendid loaves of bread, the 
piles of clean dishes. Not a spot of grease in those 
crowded quarters. In a corner the President of the 
Chamber of Commerce was cashier for the night. 

Adjoining was a rest-room with six or eight beds, 
and a lavatory large enough for several men simulta- 
neously to wash off the dust of their long journey. 

These cantines are supported by collections taken 
up on trains. On any train between Paris and any 
point in France outside of the War Zone girls in the 
uniform of the Croix Rouge appear at every stop and 
shake a box at you. They are wooden boxes, with a 
little slit at the top. As I have myself seen people 
slipping in coppers and, no doubt, receiving the credit 
from other passengers of donating francs, I suggested 
that these young cadets of the Red Cross would add 
heavily to their day's toll if they passed round open 
plates. Certainly no one would dare contribute copper 
under the sharp eyes of his fellows. This, I was told, 



132 THE LIVING PRESENT 

was against the law, but that it might be found prac- 
ticable to use glass boxes. 

In any case the gains are enough to run these can- 
tines. The girls are almost always good looking and 
well bred, and they look very serious in their white 
uniform with the red cross on the sleeves; and the 
psychotherapeutic influence is too strong for any one 
to resist. 

Madame Waddington had brought a large box of 
chocolates and she passed a piece over the shoulder 
of each soldier, who interrupted the more serious busi- 
ness of the moment to be polite. Other people bring 
them flowers, or cigarettes, and certainly there is no 
one in the world so satisfactory to put one's self to 
any effort for as a poilu. On her manners alone 
France should win her war. 



X 

THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE* 



MADAME LA COMTESSE D'HAUSSON- 
VILLE, it is generally conceded, is not only 
the greatest lady in France but stands at the very head 
of all women working for the public welfare in her 
country. That is saying a great deal, particularly at 
this moment. 

Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or 
noblesse, division of the Red Cross, which, like the 
two others, has a title as distinct as the social status 
of the ladies who command, with diminishing degrees 
of pomp and power. 

Societe Franchise de Secours aux Blesses Militaires 
is the name of the crack regiment. 

The second division, presided over by Madame 
Carnot, leader of the grande bourgeoisie, calls itself 
Association des Dames Franchises, and embraces all 

* Naturally this should have been the first chapter, both on 
account of the importance of the work and the position of 
Madame d'Haussonville among the women of France, but 
unfortunately the necessary details did not come until the 
book was almost ready for press. 

133 



134 THE LIVING PRESENT 

the charitably disposed of that haughty and powerful 
body. 

The third, operated by Madame Perouse, and com- 
posed of able and useful women whom fate has planted 
in a somewhat inferior social sphere — in many social 
spheres, for that matter — has been named (note the 
significance of the differentiating noun) Union des 
Femmes de France. 

Between these three useful and admirable organiza- 
tions there is no love lost whatever. That is to say, 
in reasonably normal conditions. No doubt in that 
terrible region just behind the lines they sink all dif- 
ferences and pull together for the common purpose. 

The Red Cross was too old and too taken-for- 
granted an organization, and too like our own, for all 
I knew to the contrary, to tempt me to give it any of 
the limited time at my disposal in France; so, as it 
happened, of these three distinguished chiefs the only 
one I met was Madame d'Haussonville. 

She interested me intensely, not only because she 
stood at the head of the greatest relief organization in 
the world, but because she is one of the very few 
women, of her age, at least, who not only is a great 
lady but looks the role. 

European women tend to coarseness, not to say 
commonness, as they advance in age, no matter what 
their rank; their cheeks sag and broaden, and their 
stomachs contract a fatal and permanent entente with 
their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge 
spiteful nature with the daily counter-attacks of art, 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 135 

they put on a red-brown wig (generally sideways) and 
let it go at that. Sometimes they smudge their eye- 
brows with a pomade which gives that extinct member 
the look of being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they 
contemptuously reject rouge or even powder. When 
they have not altogether discarded the follies or the 
ennui of dress, but patronize their modiste conscien- 
tiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to those 
uncompromisingly respectable women of the first so- 
ciety in our own land, who frown upon the merely 
smart. 

It is only the young women of fashion in France 
who make up lips, brows, and cheeks, as well as hair 
and earlobes, who often look like young clowns, and 
whose years give them no excuse for making up be- 
yond subservience to the mode of the hour. 

It is even sadder when they are emulated by ambi- 
tious ladies in the provinces. I went one day to a 
great concert — given for charity, of course — in a 
town not far from Paris. The Mayor presided 
and his wife was with him. As I had been taken 
out from Paris by one of the Patrons I sat in the box 
with this very well-dressed and important young 
woman, and she fascinated me so that I should have 
feared to appear rude if she had not been far too 
taken up with the titled women from Paris, whom she 
was meeting for the first time in her life, to pay any 
attention to a mere American. 

She may have been twenty-eight, certainly not over 
thirty, but she had only one front tooth. It was a 



136 THE LIVING PRESENT 

very large tooth and it stuck straight out. Her lips 
were painted an energetic vermillion. Her mouth too 
was large, and it spread across her dead white (and 
homely) face like a malignant sore. She smiled con- 
stantly — it was her role to be gracious to all these 
duchesses and ambassadresses — and that solitary tooth 
darted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War 
Zone. But I envied her. She was so happy. So im- 
portant. I never met anybody who made me feel so 
insignificant. 

II 

Madame d'Haussonville naturally suggests to the 
chronicler the sharpest sort of contrasts. 

I am told that she devoted herself to the world until 
the age of fifty, and she wielded a power and received 
a measure of adulation from both sexes that made her 
the most formidable social power in France. But the 
De Broglies are a serious family, as their record in 
history proves. Madame d'Haussonville, without re- 
nouncing her place in the world of fashion, devoted 
herself more and more to good works, her superior 
brain and executive abilities forcing her from year to 
year into positions of heavier responsibility. 

I was told that she was now seventy; but she is a 
woman whose personality is so compelling that she 
rouses none of the usual vulgar curiosity as to the 
number of years she may have lingered on this planet. 
You see Madame d'Haussonville as she is and take 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 137 

not the least interest in what she may have been dur- 
ing the years before you happened to meet her. 

Very tall and slender and round and straight, her 
figure could hardly have been more perfect at the age 
of thirty. The poise of her head is very haughty and 
the nostril of her fine French nose is arched and thin. 
She wears no make-up whatever, and, however plainly 
she may feel it her duty to dress in these days, her 
clothes are cut by a master and an excessively modern 
one at that; there is none of the Victorian built-up 
effect, to which our own grandes dames cling as to 
the rock of ages, about Madame d'Haussonville. Her 
waist line is in its proper place — she does not go to 
the opposite extreme and drag it down to her knees — 
and one feels reasonably sure that it will be there at 
the age of ninety — presupposing that the unthinkable 
amount of hard work she accomplishes daily during 
this period of her country's crucifixion shall not have 
devoured the last of her energies long before she is 
able to enter the peaceful haven of old age. 

She is in her offices at the Red Cross headquarters 
in the Rue Frangois i er early and late, leaving them 
only to visit hospitals or sit on some one of the in- 
numerable committees where her advice is imperative, 
during the organizing period at least. 

Some time ago I wrote to Madame d'Haussonville, 
asking her if she would dictate a few notes about her 
work in the Red Cross, and as she wrote a very full 
letter in reply, I cannot do better than quote it, par- 



138 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ticularly as it gives a far more comprehensive idea of 
her personality than any words of mine. 

"Paris, March 28th, 19 17. 
"Dear Mrs. Atherton: 

"I am very much touched by your gracious letter 
and very happy if I can serve you. 

"Here are some notes about our work, and about 
what I have seen since August, 19 14. All our 
thoughts and all our strength are in the great task, 
that of all French women, to aid the wounded, the 
ill, those who remain invalids, the refugees of the 
invaded districts, all the sufferings actually due to 
these cruel days. 

"Some weeks before the war, I was called to the 
ministry, where they asked me to have two hundred 
infirmaries ready for all possible happenings. We had 
already established a great number, of which many 
had gone to Morocco and into the Colonies. To-day 
there are fifteen or sixteen thousand volunteer nurses 
to whom are added about eleven thousand auxiliaries 
used in accessory service (kitchen, bandages, steriliza- 
tion, etc.) and also assisting in the wards of the ill 
and the wounded. 

"To the hospitals there have been added since the 
month of August, 19 14, the infirmaries and station 
cantines where our soldiers receive the nourishment 
and hot drinks which are necessary for their long 
journeys. 

"At Amiens, for instance, the cantine, an annex of 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 139 

the station infirmary began with the distribution of 
slices of bread and drinks made by our women as the 
trains arrived. Then a big room used for baggage 
was given to us. A dormitory was made of it for 
tired soldiers, also a reading-room. At any hour 
French, English or Belgians may receive a good meal 
—soup, one kind of meat and vegetables, coffee or 
tea. Civil refugees are received there and constantly 
aided and fed. 

"Our nurses attend to all wants, and above every- 
thing they believe in putting their hearts into their 
work administering to those who suffer with the 
tenderness of a mother. In the hospital wards noth- 
ing touched me more than to see the thousand little 
kindnesses which they gave to the wounded, the dis- 
tractions which they sought to procure for them 
each day. 

"In our great work of organization at the Bureau 
on Rue Frangois i er , I have met the most beautiful 
devotion. Our nurses do not hesitate at contagion, 
nor at bombardments, and I know some of your com- 
patriots (that I can never admire enough), who ex- 
pose themselves to the same dangers with hearts full 
of courage. 

"I have visited the hospitals nearest the Front, Dun- 
kerque, so cruelly shelled. I have been to Alsace, to 
Lorraine, then to Verdun from where I brought back 
the most beautiful impression of calm courage. 

"Here are some details which may interest your 
compatriots : 



( i 4 o THE LIVING PRESENT 

"June 1 916. My first stop was at Chalons, where 
with Mme. Terneaux-Compans our devoted senior 
nurse, I visited the hospital Corbineau, former quar- 
ters for the cavalry, very well reconstructed by the 
Service de Sante, for sick soldiers; our nurses are 
doing service there; generous gifts have enabled us to 
procure a small motor which carries water to the three 
stories, and we have been able to install baths for the 
typhoid patients. 

"At the hospital Forgeot (for the officers) I ad- 
mired the ingeniousness with which our nurses have 
arranged for their wounded a quite charming assem- 
bly-room with a piano, some growing plants and sev- 
eral games. 

"I also visited our auxiliary hospital at Sainte- 
Croix. It would be impossible to find a more beau- 
tiful location, a better organization. I have not had, 
to my great regret, the time to visit the other hos- 
pitals, which, however, I already know. That will be, 
I hope, for another time. 

"The same day I went to Revigny. Oh, never shall 
I forget the impressions that I received there. First, 
the passage through that poor village in ruins, then 
the visit to the hospital situated near the station 
through which most of the wounded from Verdun 
pass. 

"What was, several months ago, a field at the edge 
of the road, has become one big hospital of more than 
a thousand beds, divided into baraques. We have 
twenty-five nurses there. Since the beginning of the 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 141 

battle they have been subjected to frightful work; 
every one has to care for a number of critically 
wounded — those who have need of operations and 
who are not able to travel further. What moved me 
above everything was to find our nurses so simple 
and so modest in their courage. Not a single com- 
plaint about their terrible fatigue — their one desire 
is to hold out to the end. When I expressed my ad- 
miration, one of them answered : 'We have only one 
regret : it is that we have too much work to give 
special attention to each of the wounded, and then 
above all it is terrible to see so many die.' 

"I visited some of the baraques, and I observed that, 
in spite of the excessive work, they were not only 
clean but well cared for, and flowers everywhere! I 
also saw a tent where there were about ten Germans ; 
one of our nurses who spoke their language was in 
charge; they seemed to me very well taken care of — 
'well,' because they were wounded, not 'too well' be- 
cause — we cannot forget. 

"I tore myself away from Revigny, where I should 
have liked to remain longer, and I arrived that night 
at Jeans d'Heurs, which seemed to me a small paradise. 
The wounded were admirably cared for in beautiful 
rooms, with windows opening on a ravishing park; 
the nurses housed with the greatest care. 

"The next day I was at Bar-le-Duc, first at the 
Central, which is an immense hospital of three thou- 
sand beds. Before the war it was a caserne (barrack). 
They reconstructed the buildings and in the courts they 



142 THE LIVING PRESENT 

put up sheds; our nurses are at work there — among 
them the beloved President of our Association — the 
Mutual Association of Nurses. All these buildings 
seemed to me perfect. I visited specially the splendidly 
conducted surgical pavilion and the typhoid pavilion. 

"The white-washed walls have been decorated by 
direction of the nurses with great friezes of color, 
producing a charming effect which ought to please the 
eyes of our beloved sick. 

"I visited also the laboratory where they showed 
me the chart of the typhoid patients — the loss so high 
in 19 1 4 — so low in 19 1 5. I noted down some figures 
which I give here for those who are interested in the 
question of anti-typhoid vaccine: In November 19 14, 
379 deaths. In November 191 5, 22! What a new 
and wonderful victory for French science! I must 
add that three of our nurses have contracted typhoid 
fever; none of them was inoculated; twenty who 
were inoculated caught nothing. 

"While we were making this visit, we heard the 
whistle which announced the arrival of taubes — we 
wanted very much to remain outside to see, but we 
were ordered to go in; I observed that our nurses 
obeyed the order because of discipline, not on account 
of fear. 'We can only die once!' one of them said to 
me, shrugging her shoulders. Their chief concern is 
for the poor wounded. Many of them now that they 
are in bed, powerless to defend themselves, become 
nervous at the approach of danger. They have to be 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 143 

reassured. If the shelling becomes too heavy, they 
carry them down into the cellars. 

"These taubes having gone back this time without 
causing any damage, we set off for Savonnieres, a 
field hospital of about three hundred beds, established 
in a little park. It is charming in summer, it may be 
a little damp in winter, but the nurses do not com- 
plain; the nurses never complain! 

"Saturday was the most interesting day of my trip. 
I saw two field hospitals between Bar-le-Duc and 
Verdun. Oh! those who have not been in the War 
Zone cannot imagine the impression that I received 
on the route which leads 'out there,' toward the place 
where the greatest, the most atrocious struggle that 
has ever been is going on. All those trucks by hun- 
dreds going and coming from Verdun; those poor 
men breaking stones, ceaselessly repairing the roads, 
the aeroplane bases, the depots of munitions, above all 
the villages filled with troops, all those dear little 
soldiers, some of them fresh and clean, going, the 
others yellow with mud returning — all this spectacle 
grips and thrills you. 

"We breakfasted at Chaumont-sur-Aire ; I cannot 
say how happy I was to share, if only for an hour, 
the life of our dear nurses ! Life here is hard. They 
are lodged among the natives more or less well. They 
live in a little peasant's room near a stable; they eat 
the food of the wounded, not very varied — 'boule' 
every two weeks. How they welcomed the good fresh 
bread that I brought ! 



144 THE LIVING PRESENT 

"Their work is not easy, scattered over a wide 
field; tents, and barns here and there, and then they 
have been deprived of an 'autocher,' which had to 
leave for some other destination. 

"Many of the wounded from Verdun come there; 
and what wounded! Never shall I forget the fright- 
ful plight of one unfortunate, upon whom they were 
going to operate without much chance of success alas. 
He had remained nearly four days without aid, and 
gangrene had done its work. 

"I had tears in my eyes watching the sleep of our 
heroes who had arrived that morning overcome and 
wornout, all covered with dust; I would have liked 
to put them in good beds, all white with soft pillows 
under their heads. Alas in these hospitals at the front, 
one cannot give them the comfort of our hospitals in 
the rear. 

"After having assisted at the great spectacle of a 
procession of taubes going toward Bar-le-Duc, I was 
obliged to leave Chaumont to go to Vadelaincourt, 
which is thirteen kilometres from Verdun, the nearest 
point of our infirmaries. I was there in March at the 
beginning of the battle. 

"What wonderful work has been accomplished! It 
is not for me to judge the Service de Sante, but I 
cannot help observing that a hospital like that of 
Vadelaincourt does honor to the head doctor who or- 
ganized it in full battle in the midst of a thousand 
difficulties. It is very simple, very practical, very 
complete. I found nurses there who for the most 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 145 

part have not been out of the region of Verdun since 
the beginning of the war. Their task is especially 
hard. How many wounded have passed through their 
hands ; how have they been able to overcome all their 
weariness? It is a pleasure to find them always alert 
and watchful; I admired and envied them. 

"It was not without regret that I turned my back 
on this region whose close proximity to the Front 
makes one thrill with emotion; I went to calmer 
places, I saw less thrilling things, but nevertheless, 
interesting: the charming layout at Void, that at 
Sorcy, in process of organizing, the grand hospital 
of Toul which was shelled by taubes. I was able to 
see the enormous hole dug by the bomb which fell 
very near the building that sheltered our nurses, who 
had but one idea, to run to their wounded and re- 
assure them. 

"I visited at Nancy a very beautiful hospital, the 
Malgrange, which is almost unique; it is the Red Cross 
which houses the military hospital. At the instant of 
bombardment, most of the hospitals were vacated; 
ours, situated outside of the city, gathered in the 
wounded and all the personnel of the military hos- 
pital, and it goes very well. 

"I finished my journey with the Vosges, fipinal, 
Belfort, Gerardmer, Bussang, Morvillars; all these 
hospitals which were filled for a long time with the 
wounded from the battles of the Vosges (especially 
our brave Alpines) are quiet now. 

"If I congratulated the nurses of the region of 



146 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Verdun upon their endurance, I do not congratulate 
less those of the Vosges upon their constancy; Ge- 
rardmer has had very full days — days when one could 
not take a thought to one's self. There is something 
painful, in a way, in seeing great happenings receding 
from you. We do not hear the cannon any longer, 
the wounded arrive more rarely, we have no longer 
enough to do, we are easily discouraged, we should 
like to be elsewhere and yet one must remain there 
at his post ready in case of need, which may come 
perhaps when it is least expected. 

"I shall have many things still to tell you, but I am 
going to resume my impressions of this little trip in 
a few words. 

"I have been filled with admiration. The word has, 
I believe, fallen many times from my pen, and it will 
fall again and again. I have admired our dear 
wounded, so courageous in their suffering, so gracious 
to all those who visit them; I have admired the doc- 
tors who are making and have made every day, such 
great efforts to organize and to better conditions ; and 
our nurses I have never ceased to admire. When I 
see them I find them just as I hoped, very courageous 
and also very simple. They speak very little of them- 
selves, and a great deal of their wounded; they com- 
plain very little of their fatigue, sometimes of not 
having enough to do. They always meet cheerfully 
the material difficulties of their existence as they do 
almost always the moral difficulties which are even 
more difficult. Self-abnegation, attention to their 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 147 

duty, seem to them so natural that one scarcely dares 
to praise them. 

"There is one thing that I must praise them for 
particularly — that they always seem to keep the beau- 
tiful charming coquetry that belongs to every woman. 
I often arrived without warning. I never saw hair 
disarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfec- 
tion is, I may say, a distinctive mark of our nurses. 

"And then I like the care with which they decorate 
and beautify their hospital. Everywhere flowers, pic- 
tures, bits of stuff to drape their rooms. At Revigny 
in one of the baraques I saw flowers, simple flowers 
gathered in the neighboring field, so prettily arranged, 
portraits of our generals framed in green. When I 
complimented a nurse, she answered: 'Ah, no; it is 
not well done; but I hadn't the time to do better.' 

"At Vadelaincourt, a little room was set aside for 
dressings, all done in white with curtains of white 
and two little vases of flowers. What a smiling wel- 
come for the poor wounded who come there! The 
arrangement of a room has a great deal of influence 
on the morale of the wounded/ a doctor said to me. 
All this delights me! 

"I have finished, but I shall think for a long time of 
this journey which has left in my memory unfor- 
gettable sights and in my heart very tender im- 
pressions. 

"In the Somme, also, our nurses have worked with 
indefatigable ardor, and they go on without relaxa- 
tion. The poor refugees, which the Germans return 



148 THE LIVING PRESENT 

to us often sick and destitute of everything, are re- 
ceived and comforted by our women of the Red Cross. 

"The three societies of the Red Cross — our Society 
for the Relief of the Military Wounded, the Union of 
the Women of France, and the Association of the 
Ladies of France — work side by side under the di- 
rection of the Service de Sante. 

"Our Society for the Relief of the Military 
Wounded has actually about seven hundred hospitals, 
which represent sixty thousand beds, where many 
nurses are occupied from morning until night, and 
many of them serve also at the military hospital at the 
Front, and in the Orient (three to four thousand 
nurses). 

"Every day new needs make us create new ceuvres, 
which we organize quickly. 

"The making of bandages and compresses has al- 
ways been an important work with us. Yards of 
underclothing and linen are continually asked of us 
by our nurses for their sick. The workshops which 
we have opened since the beginning of the war assist 
with work a great number of women who have been 
left by the mobilization of their men without resources. 

"The clubs for soldiers, in Paris especially, give to 
the convalescents and to the men on leave wholesome 
amusement and compensate somewhat for their absent 
families. 

"Just now we are trying to establish an anti-tubercu- 
losis organization to save those of our soldiers who 
have been infected or are menaced. Many hospitals 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 149 

are already opened for them. At Mentom, on the 
Mediterranean, for the blind tubercular; at Haute- 
ville, in the Department of the Aisne, for the officers 
and soldiers; at La Rochelle, for bone-tuberculosis; 
but the task is enormous. 

"We seek also, and the work is under way, to edu- 
cate intelligently the mutilated, so that they may work 
and have an occupation in the sad life which remains 
to them, and I assure you, chere madame, that so many 
useful things to be done leave very few leisure hours. 
If a little weariness has in spite of everything slipped 
into our hearts, a visit to the hospitals, to the am- 
bulances at the Front, the sight of suffering, so bravely, 
I will even say so cheerfully, supported by our soldiers, 
very quickly revives our courage, and brings us back 
our strength and enthusiasm. . . ." 

The Countess de Roussy de Sales (an American 
brought up in Paris) was one of the first of the in- 
firmieres to be mobilized by Madame d'Haussonville 
on the declaration of war. She went to Rheims with 
the troops, standing most of the time, but too much 
enthralled by the spirit of the men to notice fatigue. 
She told me that although they were very sober, even 
grim, she heard not a word of complaint, but con- 
stantly the ejaculation: "It is for France and our 
children. What if we die, so long as our children 
may live in peace?" 

At Rheims, so impossible had it been to make ade- 
quate preparations with the Socialists holding up every 



150 THE LIVING PRESENT 

projected budget, there were no installations in the 
hospitals but beds. The nurses and doctors were 
obliged to forage in the town for operating tables and 
the hundred and one other furnishings without which 
no hospital can be conducted. And they had little 
time. The wounded came pouring in at once. 
Madame de Roussy de Sales said they were so busy 
it was some time before it dawned on them, in spite of 
the guns, that the enemy was approaching. But 
when women and children and old people began to 
hurry through the streets in a constant procession they 
knew it was only a matter of time before they were 
ordered out. They had no time to think, however; 
much less to fear. I 

Finally the order came to evacuate the hospitals and 
leave the town, which at that time was in imminent 
danger of capture. There was little notice. The last 
train leaves at three o'clock. Be there. Madame de 
Roussy de Sales and several other nurses begged to 
go with those of their wounded impossible to transfer 
by trains, to the civilian hospitals and make them com- 
fortable before leaving them in the hands of the local 
nurses ; and obtained permission. The result was that 
when they reached the station they saw the train re- 
treating in the distance. But they had received orders 
to report at a hospital in another town that same after- 
noon. No vehicles were to be had. There was noth- 
ing to do but walk. They walked. The distance was 
twenty-three kilometres. As they had barely sat 
down since their arrival in Rheims it may be imagined 



COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE 151 

they would have been glad to rest when they reached 
their destination. But this hospital too was crowded 
with wounded. They went on duty at once. C'est 
la guerre ! I never heard any one complain. 



XI 

THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNE 

THE Marquise d'Andigne, who was Madeline 
Goddard of Providence, R. L, is President of 
Le Bien-fitre du Blesse, an ceuvre formed by Madame 
d'Haussonville at the request of the Ministere de la 
Guerre in May, 19 15. She owes this position as 
president of one of the most important war relief or- 
ganizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the most im- 
portant) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant 
executive abilities she had demonstrated while at the 
Front in charge of more than one hospital. She is an 
infirmiere major and was decorated twice for cool 
courage and resource under fire. 

The object of Le Bien-fitre du Blesse is to provide 
delicacies for the dietary kitchens of the hospitals in 
the War Zone, as many officers and soldiers had died 
because unable to eat eggs, or drink milk, the only two 
articles furnished by the rigid military system of the 
most conservative country in the world. The articles 
supplied by Le Bien-Etre du Blesse are very simple: 
condensed milk, sugar, cocoa, Franco-American soups, 
chocolate, sweet biscuits, jams, preserves, prunes, tea. 
Thousands of lives have been saved by Bien-Etre dur- 
ing the past year; for men who are past caring, or 

153 



THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNE 153 

wish only for the release of death, have been coaxed 
back to life by a bit of jam on the tip of a biscuit, or 
a teaspoonful of chicken soup. 

Some day I shall write the full and somewhat com- 
plicated history of Le Bien-Etre du Blesse, quoting 
from many of Madame d'Andigne's delightful letters. 
But there is no space here and I will merely mention 
that my own part as the American President of Le 
Bien-Etre du Blesse is to provide the major part of 
the funds with which it is run, lest any of my readers 
should be tempted to help me out.* Donations from 
ten cents to ten thousand are welcome, and $5 keeps 
a wounded man for his entire time in one of those 
dreary hospitals in that devastated region known as 
"Le Zone des Armees," where relatives nor friends 
ever come to visit, and there is practically no sound 
but the thunder of guns without and groans within. 
Not that the French do groan much. I went through 
many of these hospitals and never heard a demonstra- 
tion. But I am told they do sometimes. 

To Madame d'Andigne belongs all the credit of 
building up Le Bien-Etre du Blesse from almost noth- 
ing (for we were nearly two years behind the other 
great war-relief organizations in starting). Although 
many give her temporary assistance no one will take 
charge of any one department and she runs every side 
and phase of the work. Last winter she was cold, 
and hungry, and always anxious about her husband, 

* All donations in money are sent to the bankers, Messers John Munroe 
& Co., Eighth Floor, 360 Madison Avenue, New York. 



154 THE LIVING PRESENT 

but she was never absent from the office for a day 
except when she could not get coal to warm it; and 
then she conducted the business of the ceuvre in her 
own apartment, where one room was warmed with 
wood she had sawed herself. 

To-day Le Bien-Etre du Blesse is not only one of 
the most famous of all the war-relief organizations 
of the fighting powers but it has been run with such 
systematic and increasing success that the War Office 
has installed Bien-Etre kitchens in the hospitals (be- 
fore, the nurses had to cook our donations over their 
own spirit lamp) and delegated special cooks to relieve 
the hard-worked infirmieres of a very considerable 
tax on their energies. This is a tremendous bit of 
radicalism on the part of the Military Department of 
France, and one that hardly can be appreciated by 
citizens of a land always in a state of flux. There is 
even talk of making these Bien-Etre kitchens a part 
of the regular military system after the war is over, 
and if they do commit themselves to so revolutionary 
an act no doubt the name of the young American 
Marquise will go down to posterity — as it deserves to 
do, in any case. 



XII 
MADAME CAMILLE LYON 

MADAME LYON committed on my behalf what 
for her was a tremendous breach of the pro- 
prieties : she called upon me without the formality of 
a letter of introduction. No American can appreciate 
what such a violation of the formalities of all the 
ages must have meant to a pillar of the French 
Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it. Her 
excuse was that she had read all my books, and that 
she was a friend of Mile. Thompson, at whose £cole 
Hoteliere I was lodging. 

I was so impressed at the unusualness of this pro- 
ceeding that, being out when she first called, and un- 
able to receive her explanations, I was filled with dark 
suspicion and sought an explanation of Mile. Jacquier. 
Madame Lyon? Was she a newspaper woman? A 
secret service agent? Between the police round the 
corner and Mile. Jacquier, under whose eagle eye I 
conformed to all the laws of France in war time, I 
felt in no further need of supervision. 

Mile. Jacquier was very much amused. Madame 
Lyon was a very important person. Her husband had 
been associated with the Government for fourteen 
years until he had died, leaving a fortune behind him, 

155 



156 THE LIVING PRESENT 

a year before; and Madame Lyon was not only on 
intimate terms with the Government but made herself 
useful in every way possible to them. She was one 
of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Govern- 
ment in their great enterprise to wage war on tuber- 
culosis — Le Comite Central d'Assistance aux Mili- 
taires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers to teach 
the men how to learn new trades by which they might 
sit at home in comfort and support themselves. 

And she had her own ouvroir — "L'Aide Immediate" 
— for providing things for the permissionnaires, who 
came to the door and asked for them. She ran, with 
a committee of other ladies, a cafe in Paris, where 
the permissionnaires or the reformes could go and 
have their afternoon coffee and smoke all the cigar- 
ettes that their devoted patrons provided. One hun- 
dred poilus came here a day, and her ouvroir had al- 
ready assisted eighteen thousand. And 

But by this time I was more interested to meet 
Madame Lyon than any one in Paris. As I have said 
before, a letter or two will open the doors of the 
noblesse or the "Intellectuals" to any stranger who 
knows how to behave himself and is no bore, but to 
get a letter to a member of the bourgeoisie — I hadn't 
even made the attempt, knowing how futile it would 
be. If one of them was doing a great work, like 
Mile. Javal, I could meet her quite easily through some 
member of her committee; but when Frenchwomen 
of this class, which in its almost terrified exclusive- 
ness reminds me only of our own social groups balanc- 



MADAME CAMILLE LYON 157 

ing on the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one 
another lest some intruder topple them off, or cast 
the faintest shadow on their hard-won prestige, are 
working in small groups composed of their own 
friends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my 
tent under her windows. 

Madame Lyon gave me a na'ive explanation of her 
audacity when we finally did meet. "I am a Jewess," 
she said, "and therefore not so bound down by con- 
ventions. You see, we of the Jewish race were sup- 
pressed so long that now we have our freedom re- 
action makes us almost adventurous." 

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she 
promptly, as if it were a matter of honor, informed 
me that she was sixty years old! She looked about 
forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose 
little and straight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in 
the smartest possible mourning, and with that white 
ruff across her placid brow — Oh la la! 

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in 
the first year of the war, and was so long getting to a 
hospital where he could receive proper attention, that 
he was gangrened. In consequence his recovery was 
very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to 
the trenches, but was, after his recovery, sent up north 
to act as interpreter between the British and French 
troops. He stood this for a few months, and Madame 
Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when 
M. Lyon, although a lawyer in times of peace, could 
not stand the tame life of interpreter. He might be 



158 THE LIVING PRESENT 

still delicate, but, he argued, there were officers at the 
front who had only one arm. At the present moment 
he is in the stiffest fighting on the Somme. 

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed 
no one more, she was so independent, so lively of 
mind, and so ready for anything. She went with me 
on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too 
glad of mental distraction; for like all the mothers 
of France she dreads the ring of the door-bell. She 
told me that several times the ladies who worked in 
her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and 
read extracts from letters just received from their sons 
at the Front, then go home and find a telegram an- 
nouncing death or shattered limbs. 

Madame Lyon has a hotel on the Boulevard Berthier 
and before her husband's death was famous for her 
political breakfasts, which were also graced by men 
and women distinguishing themselves in the arts. 
These breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at 
tea there a number of the political women. One of 
these was Madame Ribot, wife of the present Premier. 
She is a very tall, thin, fashionable looking woman, 
and before she had finished the formalities with her 
hostess (and these formalities do take so long!) I 
knew her to be an American. She spoke French as 
fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, however 
faint — or was it a mere intonation, — was unmistak- 
able. She told me afterward that she had come to 
France as a child and had not been in the United 
States for fifty-two years! 



MADAME CAMILLE LYON 159 

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers 
of Madame Viviani — in other words, the workshops 
where the convalescents who must become reformes 
are learning new trades and industries under the pa- 
tronage of the wife of the cabinet minister now best 
known to us. Madame Viviani has something like ten 
or twelve of these ateliers, but after I had seen one or 
two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened 
to long conscientious explanations, and walked miles 
in those enormous hospitals (originally, for the most 
part, Lycees) I felt that duplication could not enhance 
my knowledge, and might, indeed, have the sad effect 
of blunting it. 

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma 
chere, you are without exception, the most impatient 
woman I have ever seen in my life. You no sooner 
enter a place than you want to leave it." She was re- 
ferring at the moment to the hospitals in the War 
Zone, where she would lean on the foot of every bed 
and have a long gossip with the delighted inmate, 
extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale 
of similar wounds, healed by surgery, time and 
patience — while I, having made the tour of the cots, 
either opened and shut the door significantly, or 
walked up and down impatiently, occasionally mutter- 
ing in her ear. 

The truth of the matter was that I had long since 
cultivated the habit of registering definite impressions 
in a flash, and after a tour of the cots, which took 
about seven minutes, could have told her the nature 



i6o THE LIVING PRESENT 

of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not 
want to talk to me, and I felt impertinent hanging 
round. 

But all this was incomprehensible to a French- 
woman, to whom time is nothing, and who knows how 
the French in any conditions love to talk. 

However, to return to Madame Viviani. 

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met 
Madame Lyon and her distinguished but patient friend 
out in one of the purlieus of Paris where the Lycee of 
Arts and Crafts has been turned into a hospital for 
convalescents. 

Under the direction of a doctor each convalescent 
was working at what his affected muscles most needed 
or could stand. Those that ran sewing-machines ex- 
ercised their legs. Those that made toys and cut 
wood with the electric machines got a certain amount 
of arm exercise. The sewing-machine experts had 
already made fifty thousand sacks for sand fortifica- 
tions and breastworks. 

From this enormous Lycee (which cost, I was told, 
five million francs) we drove to the Salpetriere, which 
in the remote ages before the war, was an old people's 
home. Its extent, comprising, as it does, court after 
court, gardens, masses of buildings which loom be- 
yond and yet beyond, not only inspired awed reflections 
of the number of old that must need charity in Paris 
but made one wonder where they were at the present 
moment, now that the Salpetriere had been turned into 



MADAME CAMILLE LYON 161 

a hospital. Perhaps, being very old, they had con- 
veniently died. 

Here the men made wooden shoes with leather tops 
for the trenches, cigarette packages, ingenious toys — > 
the airships and motor ambulances were the most 
striking; baskets, chairs, lace. 

The rooms I visited were in charge of an English 
infirmiere and were fairly well aired. Some of the 
men would soon be well enough to go back to the 
Front and were merely given occupation during their 
convalescence. But in the main the object is to prepare 
the unfortunates known as reformes for the future. 

Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame 
Lyon has gone several times a month to the recaptured 
towns, in charge of train-loads of installations for the 
looted homes of the wretched people. In one entire 
village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Noth- 
ing else whatever. 



XIII 

BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK 

The Duchesse D'Uzes 

THE Duchesse d'Uzes (jeune) was not only one 
of the reigning beauties of Paris before the war 
but one of its best-dressed women; nor had she ever 
been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went to 
work the day war began and she has never ceased to 
work since. She has started something like seventeen 
hospitals both at the French front and in Saloniki, and 
her tireless brain has to its credit several notable in- 
ventions for moving field hospitals. 

Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the due's 
castles, Lucheux, built in the eleventh century. This 
she turned into a hospital during the first battle of 
the Somme in 191 5, and as it could only accommodate 
a limited number she had hospital tents erected in 
the park. Seven hundred were cared for there. 
Lucheux is now a hospital for officers. 

She herself is an infirmiere major and not only goes 
back and forth constantly to the hospitals in which she 
is interested, particularly Lucheux, but sometimes 
nurses day and night. 

I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, 

162 



BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK 163 

which is not far from Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is 
said to be by moonlight the most beautiful sight on 
earth. We both besieged the War Office. But in vain. 
The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They 
are so polite at the Ministere de la Guerre! If I had 
only thought of it a month earlier. Or if I could re- 
main in France a month or two longer? But helas! 
They could not take the responsibility of letting an 
American woman go so close to the big guns. And 
so forth. It was sad enough that the duchess risked 
her life, took it in her hand, in fact, every time she 
visited the chateau, but as a Frenchwoman, whose 
work was of such value to France, it was their duty 
to assist her in the fulfillment of her own duty to her 
country. Naturally her suggestion to take me on her 
passport as an infirmiere was received with a smile. 
So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after 
the war. 

The duchess prefers for reasons of her own to 
work, not with the noblesse division of the Red Cross, 
but with the Union des Femmes de France. As she 
is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising, 
with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for 
this uncommon secession may be left to the reader. 

And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the 
Ministere de la Guerre's cooperators, she has on the 
other hand reason to be grateful for the incessant de- 
mands upon her mind, for her anxieties have been 
g rea t — no doubt are still. Not only is the due at the 
front, but one of two young nephews who lived with 



164 THE LIVING PRESENT 

her was killed last summer, and the other, a young 
aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid when I 
was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return 
to the Front. Her son, a boy of seventeen — a volun- 
teer of course — in the sudden and secret transfers the 
army authorities are always making, sometimes could 
not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, and 
meanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or 
"missing." Since then he has suffered one of those 
cruel misfortunes which, in this war, seem to be re- 
served for the young and gallant. She writes of it 
in that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that 
is so characteristic of the French mother these days : 

"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish 
on account of my oldest son, who, as I told you, left 
the cavalry to enter the chasseurs a pied at his request. 

"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegi- 
ble) affair, and he was buried twice, then caught by 
the stifling gases, his mask having been torn off. He 
insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the 
fact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieu- 
tenant passed by and saw him. He gave orders to 
have him carried away. As soon as he reached the 
ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to 
himself with the greatest difficulty. His lungs are bet- 
ter, thank God, but his heart is very weak, and even 
his limbs are affected by the poison. Many weeks 
will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where 
he will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall 
accompany him. . . . The due is always in the Somme, 



BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK 165 

where the bombardment is something dreadful. He 
sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really it is a beau- 
tiful thing to see so much courage and patience among 
men of all ages in this country." 

In the same letter she writes : "I am just about to 
finish my new Front hospital according to the de- 
siderata expressed by our President of the Hygiene 
Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of 
the surgical movable ambulances." 

Before it was generally known that Roumania was 
"coming in" she had doctors and nurses for several 
months in France in the summer of 191 6 studying all 
the latest devices developed by the French throughout 
this most demanding of all wars. The officials sent 
with them adopted several of the Duchesse d'Uzes' in- 
ventions for the movable held hospital. 

She has never sent me the many specific details of 
her work that she promised me, or this article would 
be longer. But, no wonder! What time have those 
women to sit down and write? I often wonder they 
gave me as much time as they did when I was on 
the spot. 

The Duchesse De Rohan 

Before the war society used to dance once a week 
in the red and gold salon of the historic "hotel" of 
the Rohans' in the Faubourg St. Germain, just behind 
the Hotel des Invalides. Here the duchess enter- 
tained when she took up her residence there as a bride; 



166 THE LIVING PRESENT 

and, as her love of "the world" never waned, she 
danced on with the inevitable pauses for birth and 
mourning, until her daughters grew up and brought 
to the salon a new generation. But the duchess and 
her own friends continued to dance on a night set 
apart for themselves, and in time all of her daughters, 
but one, married and entertained in their own hotels. 
Her son, who, in due course, became the Due de 
Rohan, also married ; but mothers are not dispossessed 
in France, and the duchess still remained the center 
of attraction at the Hotel de Rohan. 

Until August second, 191 4. 

The duchess immediately turned the hotel into a 
hospital. When I arrived last summer it looked as if it 
had been a hospital for ever. All the furniture of the 
first floor had been stored and the immense dining- 
room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all 
the rooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were 
lined with cots. The pictures and tapestries have been 
covered with white linen, four bathrooms have been 
installed, and a large operating and surgical-dressing 
room built as an annex. The hall has been turned into 
a "bureau," with a row of offices presided over by- 
Maurice Rostand. 

Behind the hotel is the usual beautiful garden, very 
large and shaded with splendid trees. During fine 
weather there are cots or long chairs under every tree, 
out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the War 
Zone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The 
duchess takes in any one sent to her, the Government 



BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK 167 

paying her one- franc-fifty a day for each. The greater 
part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels. 

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do 
all of the nursing, even the most menial. They wait 
on the table, because it cheers the poilus — who, by the 
way, all beg, as soon as they have been there a few 
days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps 
up their spirits ! Her friends and their friends, if they 
have any in Paris, call constantly and bring them 
cigarettes. Fortunately I was given the hint by the 
Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, 
and armed myself with one of those long boxes that 
may be carried most conveniently under the arm. 
Otherwise, I should have felt like a superfluous in- 
truder, standing about those big rooms looking at the 
men. In the War Zone where there were often no 
cigarettes, or anything else, to be bought, it was differ- 
ent. The men were only too glad to see a new face. 

The duchess trots about indefatigably, assists at 
every operation, assumes personal charge of infec- 
tious cases, takes temperatures, waits on the table, 
and prays all night by the dying. Mr. Van Husen, a 
young American who was helping her at that time, 
told me that if a boy died in the hospital and was a 
devout Catholic, and friendless in Paris, she arranged 
to have a high mass for his funeral service at a church 
in the neighborhood. 

The last time I saw her she was feeling very happy 
because her youngest son, who had been missing for 
several weeks, had suddenly appeared at the hotel and 



168 THE LIVING PRESENT 

spent a few days with her. A week later the Due de 
Rohan, one of the most brilliant soldiers in France, 
was killed; and since my return I have heard of the 
death of her youngest. Such is life for the Mothers 
of France to-day. 



Countess Greffulhe 

The Countess Greffulhe (born Princesse de Chimay 
and consequently a Belgian, although no stretch 
of fancy could picture her as anything but a 
Parisian) offered her assistance at once to the Gov- 
ernment and corresponded with hundreds of Mayors 
in the provinces in order to have deserted hotels made 
over into hospitals with as little delay as possible. She 
also established a depot to which women could come 
privately and sell their laces, jewels, bibelots, etc. 
Her next enterprise was to form a powerful committee 
which responsible men and women of the allied coun- 
tries could ask to get up benefits when the need for 
money was pressing. 

Upon one occasion when a British Committee made 
this appeal she induced Russia to send a ballet for a 
single performance; and she also persuaded the man- 
ager of the Opera House to open it for a gala perform- 
ance for another organization. There is a romantic 
flavor about all the countess's work, and just how 
practical it was or how long it was pursued along any 
given line I was unable to learn. 



BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK 169 

Madame Paquin 

Madame Paquin, better known to Americans, I 
fancy, than any of the great dressmakers of Europe, 
offered her beautiful home in Neuilly to the Govern- 
ment to be used as a hospital, and it had accom- 
modated up to the summer of 191 6 eight thousand, 
nine hundred soldiers. 

She also kept all her girls at work from the first. 
As no one ordered a gown for something like eighteen 
months they made garments for the soldiers, or badges 
for the numerous appeal days — we all decorated our- 
selves, within ten minutes after leaving the house, like 
heroes and heroines on the field, about three times a 
week — and upon one occasion this work involved a 
three months' correspondence with all the Mayors of 
France. It further involved the fastening of ribbons 
and pins (furnished by herself) upon fifteen million 
medallions. Madame Paquin is also on many im- 
portant committees, including "L'Orphelinat des 
Armees," so well known to us. 



Madame Paul Dupuy 

Madame Dupuy was also an American girl, born 
in New York and now married to the owner of 
Le Petit Parisien and son of one of the wealthiest 
men in France. She opened in the first days of the 



170 THE LIVING PRESENT 

war an organization which she called "(Euvre du 
Soldat Blesse ou Malade," and from her offices in the 
Hotel de Crillon and her baraque out at the Depot des 
Dons (where we all have warehouses), she supplies 
surgeons at the Front with wheeling-chairs, surgical 
dressings, bed garments, rubber for operating tables, 
instruments, slippers, pillows, blankets, and a hundred 
and one other things that harassed surgeons at the 
Front are always demanding. The ceuvre of the Mar- 
quise de Noailles, with which a daughter of Mrs. 
Henry Seligmen, Madame Henri van Heukelom, is 
closely associated, is run on similar lines. 

I have alluded frequently in the course of these 
reminiscences to Madame Dupuy, who was of the 
greatest assistance to me, and more than kind and 
willing. I wish I could have returned it by collecting 
money for her ceuvre when I returned to New York, 
but I found that Le Bien-Etre du Blesse was all I 
could manage. Moreover, it is impossible to get money 
these days without a powerful committee behind you. 
To go to one wealthy and generous person or another 
as during the first days of the war and ask for a dona- 
tion for the president of an ceuvre unrepresented in 
this country is out of the question. It is no longer 
done, as the English say. 



XIV 
ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 

VERSAILLES frames in my memory the most 
tragic of the war-time pictures I collected dur- 
ing my visit to France. That romantic and lovely city 
which has framed in turn the pomp and glory of 
France, the iconic simplicities of Marie Antoinette, the 
odious passions of a French mob, screeching for bread 
and blood, and the creation of a German Empire, will 
for long be associated in my mind with a sad and 
isolated little picture that will find no niche in history, 
but, as a symbol, is as diagnostic as the storming of 
the palace gates in 1789. 

There is a small but powerful ceuvre in Paris, com- 
posed with one exception of Americans devoted to the 
cause of France. It was founded by its treasurer, Mr. 
Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of New York, 
is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary Presi- 
dent; Mrs. Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the 
Committee consists of the Comtesse de Viel Castel, 
Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H. Hill, of 
Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Commit- 
tee for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier." 

This Committee, which in May, 19 16, had already 
rescued twelve hundred children, was born of one of 

171 



172 THE LIVING PRESENT 

those imperative needs of the moment when the 
French civilians and their American friends, working 
behind the lines, responded to the needs of the unfor- 
tunate, with no time for foresight and prospective 
organization. 

In August, 1 9 14, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of 
State, told Mr. Coudert that in the neighborhood of 
Bel fort there were about eighty homeless children, 
driven before the first great wind of the war, the battle 
of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers 
and big brothers were fighting) they had wandered, 
with other refugees, down below the area of battle 
and were huddled homeless and almost starving in 
and near the distracted town of Belfort. 

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris 
to collect funds, and started with M. Cruppi for Bel- 
fort. There they found not eighty but two hundred 
and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them 
half imbecile from shock, and all physically disor- 
dered. 

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when 
Belfort itself might fall at any moment, was out of 
the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr. Coudert crowded 
them all into the military cars allotted by the Govern- 
ment and took them to Paris. Some money had been 
raised. Mr. Coudert cabled to friends in America, 
Mrs. Bliss (wife of the First Secretary of the Amer- 
ican Embassy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributed 
generously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and 
advice for a time, and Madame Pietre, wife of the 



ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 173 

sous-prefet of Yvetot, installed the children in an 
old seminary near her home and gave them her per- 
sonal attention. Later, one hundred were returned to 
their parents and the rest placed in a beautiful chateau 
surrounded by a park. 

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war 
proved that more and more children must be cared 
for by those whom fortune had so far spared. It was 
then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work and 
interests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the 
Comtesse de Viel Castel volunteered. The organiza- 
tion was formed and christened, Mrs. Bliss provided 
Relief Depots in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to 
New York for a brief visit in search of funds. 

During the bombardment of the Belgian and French 
towns these children came into Paris on every train. 
They were tagged like post-office packages, and it was 
as well they were, not only because some were too 
little to know or to pronounce their names correctly, 
but even the older ones were often too dazed to give 
a coherent account of themselves; although the more 
robust quickly recovered. The first thing to do with 
this human flotsam was to wash and disinfect and 
feed it, clip its hair to the skull, and then, having 
burned the rags of arrival, dress it in clean substantial 
clothes. While I was in Paris Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. 
Hill were meeting these trains ; and, when the smaller 
children arrived frightened and tearful they took 
them in their arms and consoled them all the way to 



174 THE LIVING PRESENT 

the Relief Depots. The result was that they needed 
the same treatment as the children. 

It was generally the Cure or the Mayor of the 
bombarded towns that had rounded up each little par- 
entless army and headed it toward Paris. When the 
larger children were themselves again they all told the 
same bitter monotonous stories. Suddenly a rain of 
shrapnel fell on their village or town. They fled to 
the cellars, perhaps to the one Cave Voutee (a stone 
cellar with vaulted roof) and there herded in inde- 
scribable filth, darkness, fear, hunger for weeks and 
even months at a time. The shelling of a village soon 
stopped, but in the larger towns, strategic points de- 
sired of the enemy, the bombarding would be inces- 
sant. Mothers, or older children, would venture out 
for food, returning perhaps with enough to keep the 
pale flame of life alive, as often as not falling a 
huddled mass a few feet from the exit of the cellar. 
Mothers died of typhoid, pneumonia, in childbirth; 
others never had reached the cellar with their own 
children in the panic; one way or another these chil- 
dren arrived in Paris in a state of orphanhood, al- 
though later investigations proved them to have been 
hiding close to their mother (and sometimes father; 
for all men are not physically fit for war) by the 
width of a street, in a town where the long roar of 
guns dulled the senses and the affections, and the con- 
stant hail of shrapnel precluded all search for anything 
but food. 

Moreover, many families had fled from villages 



ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 175 

lying in the path of the advancing hordes to the 
neighboring towns, and there separated, crowding into 
the nearest Caves Voutees. Most of these poor women 
carried a baby and were distraught with fear besides ; 
the older children must cling to the mother's skirts 
or become lost in the melee. 

When one considers that many of these children, in 
Rheims or Verdun, for instance, were in cellars not 
for weeks but for months, without seeing the light 
of day, with their hunger never satisfied, with corpses 
unburied for days until a momentary lull encouraged 
the elders to remove the sand bags at the exit and 
thrust them out, with their refuge rocking constantly 
and their ear-drums splitting with raucous sounds, 
where the stenches were enough to poison what red 
blood they had left and there were no medicines to 
care for the afflicted little bodies, one pities anew those 
mentally afflicted people who assert at automatic 
intervals, "I can't see any difference between the 
cruelty of the British blockade and the German sub- 
marines." The resistant powers of the human body, 
given the bare chance of remaining alive, are little 
short of phenomenal. But then, when Nature com- 
pounded the human frame it was to fling it into a new- 
born world far more difficult to survive than even the 
awful conditions of modern warfare. 

Some of these children were wounded before they 
reached the cellars. In many cases the families re- 
mained in their homes until the walls, at first pierced 
by the shrapnel, began to tumble about their ears. 



176 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Then they would run to the homes of friends on 
the other side of the town, staying there until the 
guns, aided by the air scouts, raked such houses as 
had escaped the first assault. Often there were no 
Caves Voutees in the villages. The mothers cowered 
with their children under the tottering walls or lay 
flat on the ground until the German guns turned else- 
where ; then they ran for the nearest town. But dur- 
ing these distracted transfers many received wounds 
whose scars they are likely to carry through life. The 
most seriously wounded were taken to the military 
hospitals, where they either died, or, if merely in need 
of bandages, were quickly turned out to make room 
for some poilu arriving in the everlasting procession 
of stretchers. 

Sometimes, flat on their stomachs, the more curious 
and intelligent of the children watched the shells sail- 
ing overhead to drop upon some beautiful villa or 
chateau and transpose it into a heap of stones. Where 
there were English or Americans in these bombarded 
towns, or where the Cures or the Mayors of those 
invaded had not been shot or imprisoned, the children 
were sent as quickly as possible to Paris, the mothers, 
when there were any, only too content to let them go 
and to remain behind and take their chances with the 
shells. 

One little Belgian named Bonduelle, who, with two 
brothers, reached Paris in safety, is very graphic: 
"We are three orphans," he replied in answer to the 
usual questions. "Our uncle and aunt took the place 



ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 177 

of our dear parents, so soon taken from us. . . . It 
was towards the evening of Wednesday, 6th Septem- 
ber, 1914, that I was coming back to my uncle's house 
from Ypres, when all at once I heard shrieks and 
yells in the distance. I stopped, for I was like one 
stunned. On hearing behind me, on the highway, Ger- 
man cavalry, I ran into a house where I spent the 
night. I could not close my eyes when I thought of 
the anxiety of my uncle and aunt and of the fate of 
my two small brothers, Michael and Roger. Early 
the following day I rushed to our house. Everybody 
was in the cellar. We shed tears on meeting again. 
I found two of my cousins wounded by a shell which 
had exploded outside our door. Soon another shell 
comes and smashes our house. I was wounded. Dazed 
with fear, my cousin and myself got out through a 
window from the cellar, we ran across fields and 
meadows to another uncle, where the rest of the 
family followed us soon. We remained there the 
whole winter, but what a sad winter! We have not 
taken off our clothes, for at every moment we feared 
to have to run away again. 

'The big guns rumbled very much and the shells 
whistled over our heads. Every one heard : 'So-and- 
so is killed' or 'wounded, by a shell.' 'Such-and-such- 
a-house is ruined by a shell,' 

"After having spent more than seven months in 
incredible fear, my brothers and myself have left the 
village, at the order of the gendarmes, and the Eng- 



178 THE LIVING PRESENT 

lish took us to Hazebrouck, from where we went to 
Paris." 

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally 
the case, the mother, after many terrifying experi- 
ences in her village, passed and repassed by the Ger- 
mans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris, sent 
their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a 
place of comparative safety until the end of the war. 
Young Bruno Van Wonterghem told his experience in 
characteristically simple words : 

"Towards the evening of September 6th, 1914, the 
Germans arrived at our village with their ammuni- 
tion. One would have thought the Last Judgment was 
about to begin. All the inhabitants were hiding in 
their houses. I was hiding in the attic, but, desirous 
to see a German, I was looking through a little window 
in the roof. Nobody in the house dared to go to bed. 
It was already very late when we heard knocks at the 
door of our shop. It was some Germans who wanted 
to buy chocolate. Some paid but the majority did not. 
They left saying, 'Let us kill the French.' The fol- 
lowing morning they marched away toward France. 
In the evening one heard already the big gims in the 
distance. 

"Turned out of France the Germans came to St. 
Eloi, where they remained very long. Then they ad- 
vanced to Ypres. The whole winter I heard the 
rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the 
shells. I learned also every day of the sad deaths of 
the victims of that awful war. I was often very 



ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 179 

frightened and I have been very happy to leave for 
France with my companions." 

While I was in Paris the refugee children, of course, 
were from the invaded districts of France; the Bel- 
gian stream had long since ceased. Already twelve 
hundred little victims of the first months of the war, 
both Belgian and French, either had been returned to 
their mothers or relatives by the Franco-American 
Committee, or placed for the educational period of 
their lives in families, convents, or boys' schools. The 
more recent were still in the various colonies estab- 
lished by Mrs. Hill and the other members of the 
Committee, where they received instruction until such 
time as their parents could be found, or some kind 
people were willing to adopt them. 

It was on my first Sunday in Paris that Mr. Jaccaci 
and Mrs. Hill asked me to drive out with them to 
Versailles and visit a sanitorium for the children 
whose primary need was restoration to health. It was 
on the estate of Madame Philip Berard, who had con- 
tributed the building, while the entire funds for its 
upkeep, including a trained nurse, were provided by 
Mrs. Bliss. 

Versailles was as green and peaceful as if a few 
miles away the shells were not ripping up a field a 
shot. After lunch in the famous hotel ordinarily one 
of the gayest in France at that time of the year, we 
first visited the rest hospital of Miss Morgan, Miss 
Marbury and Miss de Wolfe, and then drove out into 
the country to Madame Berard's historical estate. 



180 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Here, in the courtyard of a good-sized building, we 
were greeted by about forty children in pink-and- 
white gingham aprons, and heads either shaved or 
finished off with tightly braided pigtails. It seemed 
to me then that they were all smiling, and — for they 
had been there some weeks — that most of them looked 
round and healthy. But I soon found that some were 
still too languid to play. One lying in a long chair 
on the terrace at the back of the house and gazing 
vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, 
the victim of months in a damp cellar. Another, al- 
though so excessively cheerful that I suspect she was 
not "all there" was also confined to a long chair, with 
a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, 
and surrounded by all the little luxuries that the vic- 
tims of her smile had remembered to send her. One 
beautiful child had the rickets, and several suffered 
from intestinal prolapsus and other internal com- 
plaints, but were on the road to recovery. 

While their Swedish nurse was putting them 
through their gymnastic exercises I studied their faces. 
At first my impression was one of prevailing homeli- 
ness; scrubbed, flat, peasant faces, for the most part, 
without the features or the mental apparatus that pro- 
vides expression. But soon I singled out two or three 
pretty and engaging children, and rarely one whose 
face was devoid of character. And they stood well 
and went through their exercises with precision and 
vigor. 

It was just before we left that my wandering atten- 



ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS 181 

tion was directed toward the scene to which I alluded 
in my first paragraph. The greater number of the 
children were shouting at play in a neighboring field. 
The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the 
lovely woods beyond the terrace, woods where little 
princes had frolicked, and older princes had wooed 
and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting the beautiful 
little boy who looked like the bambino on the cele- 
brated fresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and 
hugging several little girls who had clung to her skirts. 
It was, in spite of its origin, a happy scene. 

I had been waiting by the door for these ceremonies 
of affection to finish, when I happened to glance at 
the far end of the wide stone terrace. There, by the 
balustrade, in the shadow of the leafy woods, stood 
a girl of perhaps eight or ten. Her arms hung at her 
sides and she was staring straight before her while she 
cried as I never have seen a child cry ; silently, bitterly, 
with her heavy plain face hardly twisted in its tragic 
silent woe. 

I called Mrs. Hill's attention to her, for I, a stranger, 
could not intrude upon a grief like that, and the idol 
of all those children immediately ran over to the deso- 
late figure. She questioned her, she put her arms 
about her. She might as well have addressed one of 
the broken stone nymphs in the woods. That young 
mind, startled from the present, it may be, by witness- 
ing the endearments lavished upon prettier and smaller 
children, had traveled far. She was in the past, a 
past that anteceded even that past of death and thun- 



182 THE LIVING PRESENT 

dering guns and rocking walls and empty stomachs; 
a past when the war, of whose like she had never 
heard, was still in the sleepless brains of the monster 
criminals of history, when she lived in a home in a 
quiet village with the fields beyond; where she had a 
mother, a father, sisters, brothers; where her tears 
had been over childish disappointments, and her 
mother had dried them. Small and homely and in- 
significant she stood there in her tragic detachment the 
symbol of all the woe of France, and of the depraved 
brutality of a handful of ambitious men who had 
broken the heart of the world. 



XV 
THE MARRAINES 

IT is hardly too much to say that every woman in 
France, from noblesse to peasant, has her filleul 
(godson) in the trenches; in many cases, when she 
still has a considerable income in spite of taxes, 
moratoriums, and all the rest of it, she is a marraine 
on the grand scale and has several hundred. Chil- 
dren have their filleul, correspond with him, send him 
little presents several times a month and weep bitterly 
when word comes that he is deep in his last trench. 

Servants save their wages so that when the filleuls 
of their mistresses come home on their six days' leave 
they at least can provide the afternoon wine and en- 
tertain them royally in the kitchen. Old maids, still 
sewing in their attic for a few sous a day, have found 
a gleam of brightness for the first time in their somber 
lives in the knowledge that they give a mite of com- 
fort or pleasure to some unknown man, offering hi? 
life in the defence of France, and whose letters, sen- 
timental, effusive, playful, almost resign these poor 
stranded women to the crucifixion of their country. 

Busy women like Madame d'Andigne sit up until 
two in the morning writing to their grateful filleuls. 
Girls, who once dreamed only of marrying and living 

183 



.184 THE LIVING PRESENT 

the brilliant life of the femme du monde spend hours 
daily not only on cheerful letters, but knitting, sew- 
ing, embroidering, purchasing for humble men who 
will mean nothing to their future, beyond the growth 
of spirit they unconsciously induced. Poor women 
far from Paris, where, at least, thousands of these 
permissionnaires linger for a few hours on their way 
home, toil all night over their letters to men for whom 
they conceive a profound sentiment but never can 
hope to see. Shop girls save their wages and lady's 
maids pilfer in a noble cause. 

It was Madame Berard (who was a Miss Dana of 
Boston) who organized this magnificent spirit into a 
great ceuvre, so that thousands of men could be made 
happy whom no kindly woman so far had been able 
to discover. 

Madame Berard, who has three sons in the army 
herself, nursed at the Front for several months after 
the war broke out. Even officers told her that they 
used to go off by themselves and cry because they 
never received a letter, or any sort of reminder that 
they were anything but part of a machine defending 
France. These officers, of course, were from the in- 
vaded district, and in addition to their isolation, were 
haunted by fears for their women now in the power 
of men who were as cruel as they were sensual and 
degenerate. 

When she returned to her home she immediately 
entered upon the career of marraine, corresponding 
with several hundred of the men she either had known 



THE MARRAINES 185 

or whose names were given to her by their com- 
manding officers. Naturally the work progressed be- 
yond her capacity and she called upon friends to help 
her out. Out of this initial and purely personal de- 
votion grew the great ceuvre, Mon Soldat, which has 
met with such a warm response in this country. 

Madame Berard's headquarters are in a villa in 
the Pare Monceau. Here is conducted all the cor- 
respondence with the agents in other cities, here come 
thousands of letters and presents by every mail to be 
forwarded to the Front, and here come the grateful — 
and hopeful — permissionnaires, who never depart 
without a present and sometimes leave one, generally 
an ingenious trinket made in the trenches. 

When I visited the villa last summer the ceuvre had 
eight thousand marraines, and no doubt the number 
has doubled to-day. Fifteen hundred of these were 
American, marshalled by Madame Berard's represen- 
tative in New York, Mr. R. W. Neeser. Some of 
these fairy godmothers had ten filleuls. Packages 
were dispatched to the Front every week. Women 
that could not afford presents wrote regularly. There 
were at that time over twenty thousand filleuls. 

The letters received from these men of all grades 
must be a source of psychologic as well as sympa- 
thetic interest to the more intelligent marraines, for 
when the men live long enough they reveal much of 
their native characteristics between the formalities so 
dear to the French. But too many of them write but 
one letter, and sometimes they do not finish that. 



XVI 
PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 



WHAT the bereft mothers of France will do after 
this war is over and they no longer have the 
mutilated sons of other mothers to nurse and serve 
and work for, is a problem for themselves; but what 
the younger women will do is a problem for the men. 

Practically every day of the three months I spent 
in Passy I used one of the three lines of tramcars 
that converge at La Muette (it is almost immoral 
to take a taxi these days) ; and I often amused myself 
watching the women conductors. They are quick, 
keen, and competent, but, whether it was owing to 
the dingy black uniforms and distressingly unbecom- 
ing Scotch military cap or not, it never did occur to 
me that there would be any mad scramble for them 
when the men of France once more found the leisure 
for love and marriage. 

Grim as these women looked, however, "on their 
job," I often noticed them laughing and joking when, 
off duty for a few moments, they rested under the 
trees at the terminus. No doubt there is in them that 
ineradicable love of the home so characteristic of 

186 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 187 

the French race, and as there is little beauty in their 
class at the best, they may appeal more to the taste of 
men of that class than they did to mine. And it may 
be that those who are already provided with husbands 
will cheerfully renounce work in their favor and re- 
turn to the hearthstone. Perhaps, however, they will 
not, and wise heads of the sex which has ruled the 
world so long are conferring at odd moments upon 
these and other females who have taken up so many 
of the reins laid down by men and driven the man- 
made teams with a success that could not be more 
complete if they had been bred to it, and with a relish 
that has grown, and shows no sign of retroaction. 

The French women of the people, however, unlovely 
to look upon, toil-worn, absorbed from childhood in 
petty economics, have little to tempt men outside of 
the home in which they reign, so for those that do 
return the problem ends. But it is an altogether dif- 
ferent matter with the women of the leisure classes. 
The industrial women who have proved so competent 
in the positions occupied for centuries by men merely 
agitate the economic brain of France, but the future 
of the women of the upper strata of the bourgeoisie 
is shaking the very soul of the social psychologist. 



11 

At the outbreak of the war hundreds of girls be- 
longing to the best families volunteered as nurses. 
Some quickly retired to committee work in disgust, 



188 THE LIVING PRESENT 

or because their pampered bodies rebelled under the 
strain. 

Others have never faltered, doing the most repul- 
sive and arduous work day by day, close to the thunder 
of guns, or under the constant menace of the taube 
whose favorite quarry is the hospital full of ill and 
wounded, and of pretty women whose torn bodies even 
in imagination satisfy the perversities of German lust; 
but if they ever go home to rest it is under the peremp- 
tory orders of their medecin major, who has no use 
for shattered nervous systems these days. 

While these girls may have lost their illusions a 
little earlier than they would in matrimony, the re- 
sult is not as likely to affect the practical French mind 
toward the married state as it might that of the more 
romantic and self -deluding American or English 
woman. There is little doubt that they will marry if 
they can, for to marry and marry early has been for 
too many centuries a sort of religious duty with well- 
born French women to be eradicated by one war; 
and as they will meet in hospital wards many offi- 
cers who might not otherwise cross their narrow 
paths, their chances, if the war ends soon enough, will 
be reasonably increased. 

Moreover, many a man who was a confirmed bache- 
lor will, after the acute discomfort of years of war- 
fare, look upon the married state as a greater reward 
than the medals on his breast; and on the other hand 
many girls will be glad to marry men old enough to 
be a parent of the young husband they once dreamed 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 189 

of; for hardly since the Thirty Years' War will men 
when peace comes be so scarce and women so many. 

There has even been talk from time to time of 
bringing the Koranic law across the Mediterranean 
and permitting each able-bodied Frenchman of any 
class to have three registered wives besides the one 
of his choice, the additional expense and responsibil- 
ity being borne by the State. 

But of all the countries in Europe polygamy is 
most unthinkable in France. The home is as per- 
fected and as sacred an economic institution as the 
State. To reign over one of those important units, 
even if deep in the shadow of the expansive male, 
to maintain it on that high level of excellence which 
in the aggregate does so much to maintain France at 
the very apex of civilization, in spite of another code 
which shocks Anglo-Saxon morality — this, combined 
with the desire to gratify the profoundest instincts 
of woman, is the ambition of every well-conditioned 
French girl. 

She would far rather, did the demand of the State 
for male children become imperative, give it one or 
more outside the law rather than forfeit her chance 
to find one day a real husband and to be a component 
part of that great national institution, The Family. 
She would not feel in the same class for a moment 
with the women who live to please men and refrain 
from justifying themselves by fulfilling at the same 
time a duty to their depleted State. 



190 THE LIVING PRESENT 

in 

The women of the noblesse, like the aristocracies 
of any country, and whatever the minor shadings and 
classifications, are divided into two classes : the con- 
servative, respectable, home-loving, no matter what 
the daily toll to rank; and the devotees of dress, 
pleasure, sex, subdivided, orchestrated, and romanti- 
cized. As these women move in the most brilliant so- 
ciety in the world and can command the willing at- 
tendance of men in all circles; as their husbands are 
so often foraging far afield; and as temptation is 
commonly proportionate to opportunity, little wonder 
that the Parisian femme du monde is the most notable 
disciple of Earth's politer form of hedonism. 

This is true to only a limited extent in the upper 
circles of the bourgeoisie. Some of the women of the 
wealthier class dress magnificently, have their lovers 
and their scandals (in what class do they not?), and 
before the war danced the night away. But the 
great majority rarely wandered far from their domes- 
tic kingdom, quite content with an occasional ball, 
dinner, or play. A daughter's marriage was the great- 
est event in their lives, and the endless preparations 
throughout the long engagement, a subdued but delic- 
ious period of excitement. Their social circles, what- 
ever their birth, were extremely restricted, and they 
were, above all things, the mates of their husbands. 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 191 

IV 

But the war has changed all that. France has had 
something like a war a generation from time imme- 
morial, but in modern times, since woman has found 
herself, they have been brief. Feminism, whether 
approved by the great mass of Frenchwomen or not, 
has done its insidious work. And for many years 
now there has been the omnipresent American woman 
with her careless independence; and, still more re- 
cently, the desperate fight of the English women for 
liberty. 

It was quite natural when this war swept across 
Europe like a fiery water-spout, for the French woman 
of even the bourgeoisie to come forth from her shell 
(although at first not to the same degree as the 
noblesse) and work with other women for the men 
at the Front and the starving at home. Not only 
did the racing events of those first weeks com- 
pel immediate action, but the new ideas they had im- 
bibed, however unwillingly, dictated their course as in- 
evitably as that of the more experienced women across 
the channel. The result was that these women for 
the first time in their narrow intensive lives found 
themselves meeting, daily, women with whom they had 
had the most distant if any acquaintance; sewing, 
knitting, talking more and more intimately over their 
work, running all sorts of ceuvres, founding homes for 
refugees, making up packages for prisoners in Ger- 
many (this ceuvre was conceived and developed into 



192 THE LIVING PRESENT 

an immense organization by Madame Wallestein), 
serving on six or eight committees, becoming more 
and more interdependent as they worked for a com- 
mon and unselfish cause; their circle of acquaintances 
and friends as well as their powers of usefulness, their 
independent characteristics which go so far toward 
the making of personality, rising higher and higher 
under the impetus of deprisoned tides until they flowed 
gently over the dam of the centuries; the flood, be it 
noted, taking possession of wide pastures heretofore 
sacred to man. 

Naturally these women spent very little time at 
home; although, such is the incomparable training of 
those practical methodical minds, even with a dimin- 
ished staff of servants the domestic machinery ran as 
smoothly as when they devoted to it so many super- 
fluous hours. 

And with these new acquaintances, all practically 
of their own class, they talked in time not only of 
the war and their ever augmenting duties, but, bar- 
riers lowered by their active sympathies, found them- 
selves taking a deep interest in other lives, and in 
the things that had interested other women of more 
intelligence or of more diversified interests than their 
own. 

Insensibly life changed, quite apart from the rude 
shocks of war; lines were confused, old ideals were 
analyzed in many instances as hoary conventions, 
which had decayed inside until a succession of sharp 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 193 

quick contacts caused the shell to cave in upon empti- 
ness. 



A year passed. During that time husbands did not 
return from the front unless ill or maimed (and thou- 
sands of husbands are even to-day quite intact). Then 
came Chapter Two of the domestic side of the War, 
which should be called "Les Permissionnaires." Offi- 
cers and soldiers were allowed a six days' leave of 
absence from the front at stated intervals. 

The wives were all excitement and hope. They 
snatched time to replenish their wardrobes, and once 
more the thousand corridors of the Galeries Lafayette 
swarmed, the dressmakers breathed again. Shop win- 
dows blossomed with all the delicate fripperies with 
which a Frenchwoman can make old garments look 
new. Hotel keepers emerged from their long night 
like hibernates that had overslept, and rubbing their 
hands. The men were coming back. Paris would 
live again. And Paris, the coquette of all the ages, 
forgot her new role of lady of sorrows and smiled 
once more. 

The equally eager husband (to pass over "les 
autres") generally sneaked into his house or apart- 
ment by the back stairs and into the bathtub before 
he showed himself to his adoring family; but after 
those first strenuous hours of scrubbing and disinfect- 
ing and shaving, and getting into a brand new uni- 
form of becoming horizon blue, there followed hours 



194 THE LIVING PRESENT 

of rejoicing unparalleled by anything but a victory 
over "Les Bodies." 

For two days husband and wife talked as incessantly 
as only Gauls can ; but by degrees a puzzled look con- 
tracted the officer's brow, gradually deepening into a 
frown. His fluent wife, whose animation over trifles 
had always been a source of infinite refreshment, was 
talking of things which he, after a solid year of monot- 
onous warfare far from home, knew nothing. He 
cared to know less. He wanted the old exchange of 
personalities, the dear domestic gabble. 

The wife meanwhile was heroically endeavoring to 
throw off a feeling of intolerable ennui. How was it 
that never before had she found the hearthstone dull ? 
The conversation of her life partner (now doubly 
honored) induced a shameful longing for the seventh 
day. 

So it was. During that year these two good people 
had grown apart. The wife's new friends bored the 
husband, and the gallant soldier's stories of life at 
the Front soon became homogeneous. Whether he 
will accept his wife's enlarged circle and new interests 
after the war is over is one of the problems, but noth- 
ing is less likely than that she will rebuild the dam, 
recall the adventurous waters of her personality, 
empty her new brain cells, no matter how much she 
may continue to love her husband and children. 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 195 

VI 

Nor to give up her new power. In those divisions 
of the bourgeoisie where the wife is always the hus- 
band's partner, following a custom of centuries, and 
who to-day is merely carrying on the business alone, 
there will be no surrender of responsibilities grown 
precious, no sense of apprehension of loss of personal 
power. But in those more leisured circles where, for 
instance, a woman has been for the first time complete 
mistress of all expenditures, domestic or administra- 
tive, and of her childrens' destinies; has learned to 
think and act for herself as if she were widowed in 
fact ; and in addition has cultivated her social sense to 
an extreme unprecedented in the entire history of the 
bourgeoisie, she will never return to the old status, 
even though she disdain feminism per se and continue 
to prefer her husband to other men — that is to say, to 
find him more tolerable. 

A young woman of this class, who until the war 
widowed her had been as happy as she was favored 
by fortune: wealthy, well-bred, brilliantly educated, 
and "elle et lui" with her husband, told me that no 
American could understand the peculiarly intensive 
life led by a French couple who found happiness in 
each other and avoided the fast sets. And whereas 
what she told me would have seemed natural enough 
in the life of a petite bourgeoisie, I must confess I 
was amazed to have it from the lips of a clever and 



196 THE LIVING PRESENT 

beautiful young woman whom life had pampered until 
death broke loose in Europe. 

The husband, she told me, did the thinking. Before 
he left home in the morning he asked his wife what 
she intended to order for dinner and altered the menu 
to his liking; also the list of guests, if it had been 
thought well to vary their charming routine with a 
select company. 

Before his wife bought a new gown she submitted 
the style and colors to what seems literally to have 
been her other half, and he solemnly pondered over 
both before pronouncing his august and final opinion. 

If they had children, the interest was naturally ex- 
tended. His concern in health and in illness, in play 
and in study, was nothing short of meticulous. I 
asked my informant if Frenchwomen would ever again 
submit to a man's making such an infernal nuisance 
of himself, and, sad as she still was at her own 
great loss, she replied positively that they would not. 
They had tasted independence and liked it too well 
ever to drop back into insignificance. 

"Nor," she added, "will we be content with merely 
social and domestic life in the future. We will love 
our home life none the less, but we must always work 
at something now; only those who have lost their 
health, or are natural parasites will ever again be 
content to live without some vital personal interest 
outside the family." 

Words of tremendous import to France, those. 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 197 

VII 

I caught a glimpse more than once of the complete 
submergence of certain Frenchwomen by husbands 
too old for war, but important in matters of State. 
They bored me so that I only escaped betraying acute 
misery by summoning all my powers of resistance and 
talking against time until I could make a graceful 
exit. They were, these women (who looked quite 
happy), mere echoes of the men to whom their eyes 
wandered in admiration and awe. The last thing I 
had imagined, however, was that the men would con- 
cern themselves about details that, in Anglo-Saxon 
countries at least, have for centuries been firmly rele- 
gated to the partner of the second part. How many 
American women drive their husbands to the club by 
their incessant drone about the iniquities of servants 
and the idiosyncrasies of offspring? 

And much as the women of our race may resent 
that their role in matrimony is the one of petty detail 
while the man enjoys the "broader interests," I think 
few of us would exchange our lot for one of con- 
stant niggling interference. It induces a certain pleas- 
ure to reflect that so many Frenchwomen have re- 
formed. Frenchmen, with all their conservatism, are 
the quickest of wit, the most supple of intellect in 
the world. No doubt after a few birth-pains they 
will conform, and enjoy life more than ever. Per- 
haps, also, they will cease to prowl abroad for secret 
entertainment. 



198 THE LIVING PRESENT 

VIII 

Nothing, it is safe to say, since the war broke out, 
has so astonished Frenchwomen — those that loved 
their husbands and those that loved their lovers — as 
the discovery that they find life quite full and in- 
teresting without men. At the beginning all their fac- 
ulties were put to so severe a strain that they had no 
time to miss them ; as France settled down to a state 
of war, and life was in a sense normal again, it was 
only at first they missed the men — quite aside from 
their natural anxieties. But as time went on and there 
was no man always coming in, husband or lover, no 
man to dress for, scheme for, exercise their imagin- 
ations to please, weep for when he failed to come, or 
lapsed from fever heat to that temperature which sug- 
gests exotic fevers, they missed him less and less. 

Unexpected resources were developed. Their work, 
their many works, grew more and more absorbing. 
Gradually they realized that they were looking at life 
from an entirely different point of view. 

Voila! 

Is the reign of the male in the old countries of 
Europe nearing its end, even as Kings and Kaisers 
are reluctantly approaching the vaults of history? An 
American woman married to a Frenchman said to me 
one day : 

"Intelligent Frenchwomen complain to me that they 
never win anything on their merits. They must exert 
finesse, seduction, charm, magnetism. For this rea- 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 199 

son they are always in a state of apprehension that 
some other woman equally feminine, but more astute 
and captivating, will win their man away. The result 
is the intense and unremitting jealousies in French 
society. They see in this war their opportunity to 
show men not only their powers of individual useful- 
ness, often equal if not superior to that of their hus- 
band or lover, but their absolute indispensability. 
They are determined to win respect as individuals, 
rise above the rank of mere females.' ' 



IX 

Moreover, this war is bringing a liberty to the 
French girl which must sometimes give her the im- 
pression that she is living in a fantastic dream. Young 
people already had begun to rebel at the old order 
of matrimonial disposition by parental authority, but 
it is doubtful if they will ever condescend to argu- 
ment again, or even to the old formal restrictions 
during the period of the long engagement. Not only 
will husbands be too scarce to dicker about, but these 
girls, too, are living their own lives, going to and 
coming from hospital work daily (unless at the 
Front), spending long hours by convalescent cots, cor- 
responding with filleuls, attending half a dozen clubs 
for work; above all, entertaining their brothers' 
friend during those oases known as permission, or 
six days' leave. And very often the friends of their 
brothers are young men of a lower rank in life, whose 



200 THE LIVING PRESENT 

valor or talents in the field have given them a quick 
promotion. 

The French army is the one perfect democracy in 
the world. Its men, from duke to peasant- farmer, 
have a contemptuous impatience for social pretense 
when about the business of war, and recognition is 
swift and practical. As the young men of the aristoc- 
racy and haute bourgeoisie have lost more and more 
of their old friends they have replaced them with men 
they like for good masculine reasons alone, and these 
they have taken to bringing home, when permission- 
naires at the same time. Nothing can be more certain 
than that girls, once haughty and exacting, will marry 
these young men and be glad to get them. 

A student of his race said to me one day : "France 
is the most conservative country in Europe. She goes 
on doing the same thing generation after generation 
paying no attention to rebellious mutters, hardly hear- 
ing them in fact. She believes herself to have been 
moulded and solidified long since. Then, presto! 
Something sudden and violent happens. Old ideas 
are uprooted. New ones planted. Is there a struggle ? 
Not for a moment. They turn an intellectual somer- 
sault and are immediately as completely at home with 
the new as the old." 

During the second year of the war a feminist was 
actually invited to address the graduation class of a 
fashionable girls' school. She told them that the 
time had come when girls of all classes should be 
trained to earn their living. This war had demon- 



PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 201 

strated the uncertainty of human affairs. Not a fam- 
ily in France, not even the haute finance, but would 
have a curtailed income for years to come, and many 
girls of good family could no longer count on a dot 
if the war lasted much longer. Then there was the 
decrease in men. Better go out into the world and 
make any sort of respectable career than be an old 
maid at home. She gave them much practical advice, 
told them that one of the most lucrative employments 
was retouching photographs, and implored them to 
cultivate any talent they might have and market it as 
soon as possible. 

The girls sat throughout this discourse as stunned 
as if a bomb had dropped on the roof. They were 
still discussing it when I left Paris. No doubt it is 
already beginning to bear fruit. Few of them but 
have that most dismal of all fireside ornaments, a 
half-effaced old-maid sister, one of the most tragic 
and pitiable objects in France. The noble attributes 
which her drab and eventless life sometimes leave un- 
withered were superbly demonstrated to the American 
audience some years ago by Nance O'Neil in "The 
Lily." 



One of the new officers I happened to hear of was a 
farmer who not only won the Croix de Guerre and the 
Croix de la Legion d'Honneur very early in the war 
but rose in rank until, when I heard the story, he was 
a major. One day a brother officer asked him if he 



202 THE LIVING PRESENT 

should remain in the army after peace was declared. 

"No," he replied, and it was evident that he had 
thought the matter over. "My wife is not a lady. She 
is wholly unfitted to take her place in the officers' class. 
There is no democracy among women. Better for us 
both that I return whence I came." 

This is a fair sample of the average Frenchman's 
ironic astuteness, that clear practical vision that sees 
life without illusions. But if the war should drag on 
for years the question is, would he be willing to sur- 
render the position of authority to which he had grown 
accustomed, and which satisfies the deepest instincts 
of a man's nature after youth has passed? After all 
there may be a new "officers' class." 

I heard another story, told me by a family doctor, 
equally interesting. The son of a wealthy and aristo- 
cratic house and his valet were mobilized at the same 
time. The young patrician was a good and a gallant 
soldier but nothing more. The valet discovered ex- 
traordinary capacities. Not only did he win the cov- 
eted medals in the course of the first few months, but 
when his shattered regiment under fire in the open 
was deprived of its officers he took command and led 
the remnant to victory. A few more similar per- 
formances proving that his usefulness was by no 
means the result of the moment's exaltation but of 
real however unsuspected gifts, he was rapidly pro- 
moted until he was captain of his former employer's 
company. There appears to have been no mean envy 
in the nature of the less fortunate aristocrat. Sev- 



PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE 203 

eral times they have received their permission to- 
gether and he has taken his old servant home with 
him and given him the seat of honor at his own 
table. His mother and sisters have made no demur 
whatever, but are proud that their menage should have 
given a fine soldier to France. Perhaps only the no- 
blesse who are unalterably sure of themselves would 
have been capable of rising above the age-old preju- 
dices of caste, war or no war. 



XI 

French women rarely emigrate. Never, if they can 
help it. Our servant question may be solved after the 
war by the manless women of other races, but the 
Frenchwoman will stay in her country, if possible in 
her home. All girls, the major part of the young 
widows (who have created a panic among the little 
spinsters) will marry if they can, not only because 
marriage is still the normal career of woman but be- 
cause of their sense of duty to the State. But that 
social France after the war will bear more than a 
family resemblance to the France that reached the 
greatest climax in her history on August second, nine- 
teen-fourteen, has ceased to be a matter of speculation. 



Although I went to France to examine the work of 
the Frenchwomen only, it would be ungracious, as 
well as a disappointment to many readers, not to give 



204 THE LIVING PRESENT 

the names at least of some of the many American 
women who live in France or who spend a part of 
the year there and are working as hard as if this great 
afflicted country were their own. Some day their 
names will be given to the world in a full roll of 
honor. I do not feel sure that I know of half of them, 
but I have written down all I can recall. The list, of 
course, does not include the names of Americans mar- 
ried to Frenchmen: 

Mrs. Sharp, Miss Anne Morgan, Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. 
Bliss, Miss Elisabeth Marbury, Miss Elsie de Wolfe, 
Mrs. Robert Bacon, Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. 
Whitney Warren, Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, 
Miss Grace Ellery Channing, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Car- 
roll of Carrollton, Mrs. Sherman, Mrs. Cooper 
Hewett, Miss Holt, Mrs. William H. Hill, Mrs. Shaw, 
Mrs. Frederick H. Allen, Mrs. Harry Payne Whit- 
ney, Miss Fairchild, Mrs. Younger, Mrs. Morton 
Mitchell, Mrs. Fleury, Mrs. Sales, Mrs. Hyde, Mrs. 
William Astor Chanler, Mrs. Ridgeley Carter, Miss 
Ethel Crocker, Miss Daisy Polk, Miss Janet Scudder, 
Mrs. Lathrop, Miss Vail, Mrs. Samuel Watson, Mrs. 
Armstrong Whitney, Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Miss Yan- 
dell, Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Duryea, Mrs. Depew, Mrs. 
Marion Crocker, Miss Mary Eyre, Mrs. Gros, Mrs. 
Van Heukelom, Mrs. Tarn McGrew, Mrs. Schoninger, 
Miss Grace Lounsbery, Mrs. Lawrence, the Princess 
Poniatowska, and Isadora Duncan. 



BOOK II 
FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR 

I 
THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 



IT is possible that if the European War had been 
averted the history of Feminism would have made 
far different reading— say fifty years hence. The 
militant suffragettes of England had degenerated from 
something like real politicians into mere neurasthenics 
and not only had lost what little chance they seemed 
for a time to have of being taken seriously by the 
British Government, but had very nearly alienated 
the many thousands of women without the ranks that 
were wavering in the balance. This was their most 
serious mistake, for the chief handicap of the mili- 
tants had been that too few women were disposed 
toward suffrage, or even interested. The history of 
the world shows that when any large body of people 
in a community want anything long enough and hard 
enough, and go after it with practical methods, they 
obtain it in one form or another. But the women of 

205 



206 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Britain as well as the awakening women of other na- 
tions east and west of the Atlantic, were so disgusted 
and alarmed by this persisting lack of self-control in 
embryonic politicians of their sex that they voted 
silently to preserve their sanity under the existing 
regime. It has formed one of the secret sources of 
the strength of the antis, that fear of the complete 
demoralization of their sex if freed from the imme- 
morial restraints imposed by man. 

This attitude of mind does not argue a very dis- 
tinguished order of reasoning powers or of clear 
thinking; but then not too many men, in spite of their 
centuries of uninterrupted opportunity, face innova- 
tions or radical reforms with unerring foresight. 
There is a strong conservative instinct in the average 
man or woman, born of the hereditary fear of life, 
that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too 
intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move 
very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheel- 
horses necessary to a stable civilization, but history, 
even current history in the newspapers, would be dull 
reading if there were no adventurous spirits willing to 
do battle for new ideas. The militant women of Eng- 
land would have accomplished wonders if their nervous 
systems had not broken down under the prolonged 
strain. 

It is probable that after this war is over the women 
of the belligerent nations will be given the franchise 
by the weary men that are left, if they choose to insist 
upon it. They have shown the same bravery, endur- 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 207 

ance, self-sacrifice, resource, and grim determination 
as the men. In every war, it may be argued, women 
have displayed the same spirit and the same qualities, 
proving that they needed but the touchstone of oppor- 
tunity to reveal the splendor of their endowment, but 
treated by man, as soon as peace was restored, as the 
same old inferior annex. 

This is true enough, but the point of difference is 
that never, prior to the Great War, was such an enor- 
mous body of women awake after the lethargic sub- 
mission of centuries, and clamoring for their rights. 
Never before have millions of women been supporting 
themselves; never before had they even contemplated 
organization and the direct political attack. Of course 
the women of Europe, exalted and worked half to 
death, have, with the exception of a few irrepressibles, 
put all idea of self-aggrandizement aside for the mo- 
ment ; but this idea had grown too big and too domin- 
ant to be dismissed for good and all, with last year's 
fashions and the memory of delicate plats prepared by 
chefs now serving valiantly within the lines. The big 
idea, the master desire, the obsession, if you like, is 
merely taking an enforced rest, and there is persist- 
ent speculation as to what the thinking and the ener- 
getic women of Europe will do when this war is over, 
and how far men will help or hinder them. 

I have written upon this question in its bearings 
upon the women of France more fully in another 
chapter; but it may be stated here that such important 
feminists as Madame Verone, the eminent avocat, and 



208 THE LIVING PRESENT 

Mile. Valentine Thompson, the youngest but one of the 
ablest of the leaders, while doing everything to help 
and nothing to embarrass their Government, never 
permit the question to recede wholly to the back- 
ground. Mile. Thompson argues that the men in 
authority should not be permitted for a moment to 
forget, not the services of women in this terrible 
chapter of France's destiny, for that is a matter of 
course, as ever, but the marked capabilities women 
have shown when suddenly thrust into positions of 
authority. In certain invaded towns the wives of im- 
prisoned or executed Mayors have taken their place 
almost automatically and served with a capacity unre- 
lated to sex. In some of these towns women have 
managed the destinies of the people since the first 
month of the war, understanding them as no man has 
ever done, and working harder than most men are ever 
willing to work. Thousands have, under the spur, 
developed unsuspected capacities, energies, endurance, 
above all genuine executive abilities. That these 
women should be swept back into private life by the 
selfishness of men when the killing business is over, 
is, to Mile. Thompson's mind, unthinkable. In her 
newspaper, La Vie Feminine, she gives weekly in- 
stances of the resourcefulness and devotion of French 
womanhood, and although the women of her country 
have never taken as kindly to the idea of demanding 
the franchise as those of certain other nations, still 
it is more than possible that she will make many 
converts before the war is over. 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 209 

These are not to be "suffrage" chapters. There is 
no doubt in my mind that the women of all nations 
will have the franchise eventually, if only because it 
is ridiculous that they should be permitted to work 
like men (often supporting husbands, fathers, broth- 
ers) and not be permitted all the privileges of men. 
Man, who grows more enlightened every year — often 
sorely against his will — must appreciate this anomaly 
in due course, and by degrees will surrender the 
franchise as freely to women as he has to negroes and 
imbeciles. When women have received the vote for 
which they have fought and bled, they will use it with 
just about the same proportion of conscientiousness 
and enthusiasm as busy men do. One line in the credo 
might have been written of human nature a.d. 1914- 
191 7: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
shall be." 

But while suffrage and feminism are related, they 
are far from identical. Suffrage is but a milestone 
in feminism, which may be described as the more or 
less concerted sweep of women from the backwaters 
into the broad central stream of life. Having for un- 
told centuries given men to the world they now want 
the world from men. There is no question in the 
progressive minds of both sexes that, outside of the 
ever-recurrent war zones, they should hereafter divide 
the great privileges of life and civilization in equal 
shares with men. 

Several times before in the history of the world 
comparatively large numbers of women have made 



210 THE LIVING PRESENT 

themselves felt, claiming certain equal rights with the 
governing sex. But their ambitions were generally 
confined to founding religious orders, obtaining ad- 
mission to the universities, or to playing the intellect- 
ual game in the social preserves. In the wonderful 
thirteenth century women rivaled men in learning and 
accomplishments, in vigor of mind and decision of 
character. But this is the first time that millions of 
them have been out in the world "on their own," in- 
vading almost every field of work, for centuries sac- 
rosanct to man. There is even a boiler-maker in the 
United States who worked her way up in poor-boy 
fashion and now attends conventions of boiler-makers 
on equal terms. In tens of thousands of cases women 
have made good, in the arts, professions, trades, busi- 
nesses, clerical positions, and even in agriculture and 
cattle raising. They are brilliant aviators, yachtsmen, 
automobile drivers, showing failure of nerve more 
rarely than men, although, as they are not engaged in 
these pursuits in equal numbers perhaps that is not 
a fair statement. Suffice it to say that as far as they 
have gone they have asked for no quarter. It is quite 
true that in certain of the arts, notably music, they 
have never equaled men, and it has been held against 
them that all the great chefs are men. Here it is 
quite justifiable to take refuge in the venerable axiom, 
"Rome was not made in a day." It is not what they 
have failed to accomplish with their grinding disabili- 
ties but the amazing number of things in which they 
have shown themselves the equal if not the superior 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 211 

of men. Whether their success is to be permanent, 
or whether they have done wisely in invading man's 
domain so generally, are questions to be attacked later 
when considering the biological differences between 
men and women. The most interesting problem relat- 
ing to women that confronts us at present is the effect 
of the European War on the whole status of woman. 

If the war ends before this nation is engulfed 
we shall at least keep our men, and the males of 
this country are so far in excess of the females that 
it is odd so many American women should be driven 
to self-support. In Great Britain the women have 
long outnumbered the men; it was estimated before 
the war that there were some three hundred thousand 
spinsters for whom no husbands were available. After 
the war there will be at best something like a propor- 
tion of one whole man to three women (confining 
these unwelcome prophecies to people of marriageable 
age) ; and the other afflicted countries, with the possi- 
ble exception of Russia, will show a similar disloca- 
tion of the normal balance. The acute question will 
be repopulation — with a view to another trial of mili- 
tary supremacy a generation hence! — and all sorts of 
expedients are being suggested, from polygamy to 
artificial fertilization. It may be that the whole future 
of woman as well as of civilization after this war is 
over depends upon whether she concludes to serve 
the State or herself. 

While in France in the summer of 19 16, I heard 
childless women say : "Would that I had six sons to 



212 THE LIVING PRESENT 

give to France!" I heard unmarried women say: 
"Thank heaven I never married I" I heard bitterness 
expressed by bereft mothers, terror and despair by 
others when the curtain had rung down and they could 
relax the proud and smiling front they presented to 
the world. Not one would have had her son shirk 
his duty, nor asked for compromise with the enemy, 
but all prayed for the war to end. It is true that these 
men at the front are heroes in the eyes of their women, 
worshiped by the majority when they come home 
briefly as permissionnaires, and it is also true that 
France is an old military nation and that the brain- 
cells of its women are full of ancestral memories of 
war. But never before have women done as much 
thinking for themselves as they are doing to-day, as 
they had done for some fifteen or twenty years before 
the war. That war has now lasted almost three years. 
During this long and terrible period there has been 
scarcely a woman in France, as in Britain, Russia, 
Italy, Germany, who has not done her share behind 
the lines, working, at her self-appointed tasks or at 
those imposed by the Government, for months on end 
without a day of rest. They have had contacts that 
never would have approached them otherwise? they 
have been obliged to think for themselves, for thou- 
sands of helpless poor, for the men at the Front. The 
Frenchwomen particularly have forced men to deal 
with them as human beings and respect them as such, 
dissipating in some measure those mists of sex through 
which the Frenchman loves to stalk in search of the 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 213 

elusive and highly-sophisticated quarry. As long as 
a woman was sexually attractive she could never hope 
to meet man on an equal footing, no matter how en- 
trancing he might find her mental qualities. She must 
play hide-and-seek, exercise finesse, seduction, keep 
the flag of sex flying ever on the ramparts. It is 
doubtful if Frenchmen will change 'in this respect, 
but it is more than doubtful if women do not. 

There is hardly any doubt that if this war lasts 
long enough women for the first time in the history 
of civilization will have it in their power to seize one 
at least of the world's reins. But will they do it — I 
am now speaking of women in mass, not of the ad- 
vanced thinkers, or of women of the world who have 
so recently ascertained that there is a special joy in 
being free of the tyranny of sex, a tyranny that 
emanated no less from within than without. 

It is to be imagined that all the men who are 
fighting in this most trying of all wars are heroes in 
the eyes of European women — as well they may be — 
and that those who survive are likely to be regarded 
with a passionate admiration not unmixed with awe. 
The traditional weakness of women where men are 
concerned (which after all is but a cunning device 
of Nature) may swamp their great opportunity. They 
may fight over the surviving males like dogs over a 
bone, marry with sensations of profound gratitude (or 
patriotic fervor) the armless, the legless, the blind, 
the terrible face mutiles, and drop forever out of the 
ranks of Woman as differentiated from the ranks of 



214 THE LIVING PRESENT 

mere women. What has hampered the cause of 
Woman in Great Britain and Europe so far is the 
quite remarkable valuation put upon the male by the 
female. This is partly temperamental, partly female 
preponderance, but it is even more deeply rooted in 
those vanished centuries during which man proclaimed 
and maintained his superiority. Circumstances helped 
him for thousands of years, and he has been taken 
by the physically weaker and child-bearing sex at his 
own estimate. It is difficult for American women to 
appreciate this almost servile attitude of even British 
women to mere man. One of the finest things about 
the militant woman, one by which she scored most 
heavily, was her flinging off of this tradition and dis- 
playing a shining armor of indifference toward man 
as man. This startled the men almost as much as 
the window smashing, and made other women, living 
out their little lives under the frowns and smiles of 
the dominant male, think and ponder, wonder if their 
small rewards amounted to half as much as the un- 
tasted pleasures of power and independence. 

It is always a sign of weakness to give one side of a 
picture and blithely ignore the other. Therefore, let 
me hasten to add that it is a well-known fact that 
Mrs. Pankhurst had borne and reared six children 
before she took up the moribund cause of suffrage; 
and that after a season's careful investigation in Lon- 
don at the height of the militant movement I con- 
cluded that never in the world had so many unattractive 
females been banded together in any one cause. Even 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 215 

the young girls I heard speaking on street corners, 
mounted on boxes, looked gray, dingy, sexless. Of 
course there were many handsome, even lovely, women, 
— like Mrs. Cavendish-Bentinck and Lady Hall, for 
instance — interested in "the movement," contributing 
funds, and giving it a certain moral support; but 
when it came to the window smashers, the jail seek- 
ers, the hunger-strikers, the real martyrs of that ex- 
traordinary minor chapter of Englands history, there 
was only one good-looking woman in the entire army 
■ — Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence — and militant extravagances 
soon became too much for her. There were intelli- 
gent women galore, women of the aristocracy born 
with a certain style, and showing their breeding even 
on the soap-box, but sexually attractive women never, 
and even the youngest seemed to have been born with- 
out the bloom of youth. The significance of this, 
however, works both ways. If men did not want 
them, at least there was something both noble and 
pitiful in their willingness to sacrifice those dreams 
and hopes which are the common heritage of the 
lovely and the plain, the old and the young, the Circe 
and the Amazon, to the ultimate freedom of those 
millions of their sisters lulled or helpless in the en- 
chanted net of sex. 

It is doubtful if even the militants can revert to 
their former singleness of purpose; after many months, 
possibly years, of devotion to duty, serving State and 
man, the effacement of self, appreciation of the naked 
fact that the integrity of their country matters more 



216 THE LIVING PRESENT 

than anything else on earth, they may be quite un- 
able to rebound to their old fanatical attitude toward 
suffrage as the one important issue of the Twentieth 
Century. Even the very considerable number of those 
women that have reached an appearance which would 
eliminate them from the contest over such men as 
are left may be so chastened by the hideous sufferings 
they have witnessed or heard of daily, so moved by 
the astounding endurance and grim valor of man 
(who nearest approaches to godhood in time of war) 
that they will have lost the disposition to tear from 
him the few compensations the new era of peace can 
offer. If that is the case, if women at the end of 
the war are soft, completely rehabilitated in that 
femininity, or femaleness, which was their original en- 
dowment from Nature, the whole great movement 
will subside, and the work must begin over again by 
unborn women and their accumulated grievances some 
fifty years hence. 

Nothing is more sure than that Nature will take 
advantage of the lull to make a desperate attempt to 
recover her lost ground. Progressive women, and 
before the war their ranks were recruited daily, were 
one of the most momentous results of the forces of 
the higher civilization, an evolution that in Nature's 
eye represented a lamentable divergence from type. 
Here is woman, with all her physical disabilities, be- 
come man's rival in all of the arts, save music, and in 
nearly all of the productive walks of life, as well as in 
a large percentage of the professional and executive; 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 217 

intellectually the equal if not the superior of the aver- 
age man — who in these days, poor devil, is born a 
specialist — and making a bold bid for political equality. 

It has been a magnificent accomplishment, and it 
has marked one of the most brilliant and picturesque 
milestones in human progress. It seems incredible 
that woman, in spite of the tremendous pressure that 
Nature will put upon her, may revert weakly to type. 
The most powerful of all the forces working for Na- 
ture and against feminism will be the quite brutal and 
obscene naturalness of war, and the gross familiarity 
of civilization with it for so long a period. There 
is reversion to type with a vengeance ! The ablest of 
the male inheritors of the accumulated wisdom and 
experiences and civilizing influences of the ages were 
in power prior to August 19 14, and not one of them 
nor all combined had the foresight to circumvent, or 
the diplomatic ingenuity to keep in leash the panting 
Hun. They are settling their scores, a.d. 1914-1917, 
by brute fighting. There has been some brain work 
during this war so far, but a long sight more brute 
work. As it was in the beginning, etc. 

And the women, giving every waking hour to 
ameliorating the lot of the defenders of their hearth 
and their honor, or nursing the wounded in hospital, 
have been stark up against the physical side : whether 
making bombs in factories, bandages or uniforms, 
washing gaping wounds, preparing shattered bodies for 
burial, or listening to the horrid tales of men and 
women home on leave. 



218 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ii 

The European woman, in spite of her exalted pitch, 
is living a more or less mechanical life at present. 
Even where she has revealed unsuspected creative 
ability, as soon as her particular task is mapped she 
subsides into routine. As a rule she is quite automati- 
cally and naturally performing those services and 
duties for which Nature so elaborately equipped her, 
ministering to man almost exclusively, even when tem- 
porarily filling his place in the factory and the tram- 
car. Dienen! Dienen! is the motto of one and all of 
these Kundrys, whether they realize it or not, and it 
is on the cards that they may never again wish to 
somersault back to that mental attitude where they 
would dominate not serve. 

On the other hand civilization may for once prove 
stronger than Nature. Thinking women — and there 
are a few hundred thousands of them — may emerge 
from this hideous reversion of Europe to barbarism 
with an utter contempt for man. They may despise 
the men of affairs for muddling Europe into the most 
terrible war in history, in the very midst of the great- 
est civilization of which there is any record. They 
may experience a secret but profound revulsion from 
the men wallowing in blood and filth for months on 
end, living only to kill. The fact that the poor men 
can't help it does not alter the case. The women 
can't help it either. Women have grown very fastid- 
ious. The sensual women and the quite unimaginative 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCH ATE 219 

women will not be affected, but how about the others ? 
And only men of the finest grain survive a long period 
of war with the artificial habits of civilization strong 
upon them. 

The end of this war may mark a conclusive revul- 
sion of the present generation of European women 
from men that may last until they have passed the 
productive age. Instead of softening, disintegrating 
back to type, they may be insensibly hardening inside 
a mould that will eventually cast them forth a more 
definite third sex than any that threatened before the 
war. Woman, blind victim of the race as she has 
been for centuries, seldom in these days loves with- 
out an illusion of the senses or of the imagination. 
She has ceased, in the wider avenues of life, lined as 
they are with the opulent wares of twentieth century 
civilization, to be merely the burden-bearing and re- 
productive sex. Life has taught her the inestimable 
value of illusions, and the more practical she becomes, 
the more she cherishes this divine gift. It is possible 
that man has forfeited his power to cast a glamour 
over all but the meanest types of women. If that 
should be the case women will ask : Why settle down 
and keep house for the tiresome creatures, study their 
whims, and meekly subside into the second place, or 
be eternally on the alert for equal rights? As for 
children? Let the state suffer for its mistakes. Wny 
bring more children into the world to be blown to 
pieces on the field of battle, or a burden to their women 
throughout interminable years? No! For a genera- 



220 THE LIVING PRESENT 

tion at least the world shall be ours, and then it may 
limp along with a depleted population or go to the 
dogs. 

Few, no doubt, will reason it out as elaborately as 
this or be so consciously ruthless, but a large enough 
number are likely enough to bring the light of their 
logic to bear upon the opportunity, and a still larger 
number to feel an obscure sense of revolt against man 
for his failure to uphold civilization against the Prus- 
sian anachronism, combined with a more definite de- 
sire for personal liberty. And both of these divisions 
of their sex are likely to alter the course of history — 
far more radically than has ever happened before at 
the close of any fighting period. Even the much de- 
pended upon maternal instinct may subside, partly 
under the horrors of field hospitals where so many 
mother's sons are ghastly wrecks, partly under a heavy 
landslide of disgust that the sex that has ruled the 
world should apparently be so helpless against so ob- 
scene a fate. 

They will reflect that if women are weak (com- 
paratively) physically, there is all the more hope they 
may develop into giants mentally ; one of man's handi- 
caps being that his more highly vitalized body with its 
coercive demands, is ever waging war with a consist- 
ent and complete development of the mind. And in 
these days, when the science of the body is so thor- 
oughly understood, any woman, unless afflicted with 
an organic disease, is able to keep her brain constantly 
supplied with red unpoisoned blood, and may wax in 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 221 

mental powers (there being no natural physical de- 
teriorations in the brain as in the body) so long as 
life lasts. 

Certainly these women will say: We could have 
done no worse than these chess players of Europe and 
we might have done better. Assuredly if we grasp 
and hold the reins of the world there will never be 
another war. We are not, in the first place, as greedy 
as men; we will divide the world up in strict accord- 
ance with race, and let every nation have its own place 
in the sun. Commercial greed has no place in our 
make-up, and with the hideous examples of history 
it will never obtain entrance. 

How often has it been the cynical pleasure of mere 
ministers of state to use kings as pawns? Well, we 
despise the game. Also, we shall have no kings, and 
republics are loth to make war. Our instincts are 
humanitarian. We should like to see all the world as 
happy as that lovely countryside of Northeastern 
France before August 19 14. We at least recognize 
that the human mind is as yet imperfectly developed; 
and if, instead of setting the world back periodically, 
and drenching mankind in misery, we would have all 
men and women as happy as human nature will permit, 
we should devote our abilities, uninterrupted by war, 
to solving the problem of poverty (the acutest evi- 
dence of man's failure), and to fostering the talents 
of millions of men and women that to-day constitute 
a part of the wastage of Earth. Of course, being 
mortal, we shall make mistakes, give way, no doubt, 



222 THE LIVING PRESENT 

to racial jealousies, and personal ambitions; but our 
eyes have been opened wide by this war and it is im- 
possible that we should make the terrible mistakes we 
inevitably would have made had we obtained power 
before we had seen and read its hideous revelations — 
day after day, month after month, year after year! 
It is true that men have made these resolutions many 
times, but men have too much of the sort of blood 
that goes to the head, and their lust for money is even 
greater than their lust for power. 

Now, this may sound fantastic but it is indisputably 
probable. Much has been said of the patriotic exalta- 
tion of young women during war and just after its 
close, which leads them to marry almost any one in 
order to give a son to the state, or even to dispense 
with the legal formality. But although I heard a great 
deal of that sort of talk during the first months of 
the war I don't hear so much of it now. Nor did I 
hear anything like as much of it in France as I ex- 
pected. To quote one woman of great intelligence 
with whom I talked many times, and who is one of 
the Government's chosen aids; she said one day, "It 
was a terrible distress to me that I had only one child, 
and I consulted every specialist in France. Now I am 
thankful that I did have but one son to come home to 
me with a gangrene wound, and then, after months of 
battling for his life, to insist upon going back to the 
Front and exposing it every day. I used to feel sad, 
too, that Valentine Thompson" (who is not only beau- 
tiful but an Amazon in physique) "did not marry and 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 223 

be happy like other girls, instead of becoming a public 
character and working at first one scheme or another 
for the amelioration of the lot of woman. Now, I am 
thankful that she never married. Her father is too 
old to go to war and she has neither husband nor 
son to agonize over. Far better she live the life of 
usefulness she does than deliberately take upon herself 
the common burdens of women." No Frenchwoman 
could be more patriotic than the one who made this 
speech to me, and if she had had many sons she would 
have girded them all for war, but she had suffered 
too much herself and she saw too much suffering 
among her friends daily, not to hate the accursed in- 
stitution of war, and wish that as many women could 
be spared its brutal impositions as possible. 

Nobody has ever accused me of being a Pacifist. 
Personally, I think that every self-respecting nation on 
the globe should have risen in 19 14 and assisted the 
Allies to blast Prussia off the face of the Earth, but 
after this war is over if the best brains in these nations 
do not at once get to work and police the world against 
future wars, it will be a matter for regret that they 
were not all on the German ship when she foundered. 

in 

It is to be remembered that woman has, in her sub- 
conscious brain-cells, ancestral memories of the Ma- 
triarchate. It is interesting to quote in this connection 



224 THE LIVING PRESENT 

what Patrick Geddes and G. Arthur Thompson have 
to say on the mooted question of the Mother- Age : 

"Prehistoric history is hazardous, but there is a 
good case to be made out for a Mother-Age. This 
has been reconstructed from fossils in the folk lore of 
agriculture and housewifery, in old customs, ceremo- 
nies, festivals, games; in myths and fairy tales and 
age-worn words. 

"Professor Karl Pierson finds in the study of witch- 
craft some of the fossils that point back to the 
Matriarchate. In the older traditions 'the witch re- 
sumes her old position as the wise-woman, the medi- 
cine woman, the leader of the people, the priestess/ 
'We have accordingly to look upon the witch as essen- 
tially the degraded form of the old priestess, cunning 
in the knowledge of herbs and medicine, jealous of the 
rights and of the goddess she serves, and preserving 
in spells and incantations such wisdom as early civili- 
zation possessed.' 

"The witch's weather wisdom is congruent with the 
fact that women were the earliest agriculturists; her 
knowledge of herbs with that of the ancient medicine 
women; her diablerie with that of the ancient group 
relations of the sexes so different from what we call 
marriage to-day ; her nocturnal dances with the ancient 
choruses of marriage-ripe maidens. The authority and 
magic circle kept by the broom are those of the hearth 
and floor in her primeval roundhut; and her distaff 
and pitchfork, her caldron, her cat and dog, are all in 
keeping with the role of woman in the Mother-Age. 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 225* 

"But there is another way, and that certainly not 
less reliable, by which we can arrive at some under- 
standing of the Mother-Age, and how it naturally 
came about, namely, by a study of our 'contemporary 
ancestors,' of people who linger on the matriarchal 
level. Such people, as well as others on the still 
lower nomad stage of civilization, are to be found at 
this day in Australia. 

"While the purely nomad stage lasted, little progress 
could be made, because the possessions of a group 
were limited by the carrying powers of its members. 
But in a favorite forest spot a long halt was possible, 
the mothers were able to drop their babies and give a 
larger part of their attention to food-getting. As be- 
fore, the forest products — roots and fruits — were 
gathered in, but more time and ingenuity were ex- 
pended in making them palatable and in storing them 
for future use. The plants in the neighborhood, which 
were useful for food or for their healing properties, 
were tended and kept free of weeds, and by and by 
seeds of them were sown in cleared ground within easy 
reach of the camp. Animals gathered about the rich 
food area, and were at first tolerated — certain negro 
tribes to-day keep hens about their huts, though they 
eat neither them nor their eggs — and later encouraged 
as a stable source of food-supply. The group was 
anchored to one spot by its increasing possessions; 
and thus home-making, gardening, medicine, the do- 
mestication of animals and even agriculture, were 
fairly begun. Not only were all these activities in the 



226 THE LIVING PRESENT 

hands of women, but to them, too, were necessarily 
left the care and training of the young. 

"The men meanwhile went away on warlike expedi- 
tions against other groups, and on long hunting and 
fishing excursions, from which they returned with 
their spoils from time to time, to be welcomed by the 
women with dancing and feasting. Hunting and war 
were their only occupations, and the time between 
expeditions was spent in resting and in interminable 
palavers and dances, which we may perhaps look upon 
as the beginnings of parliaments and music halls. 

"Whether this picture be accurate in detail or not 
there is at any rate a considerable body of evidence 
pointing to the 'Matriarchate' as a period during 
which women began medicine, the domestication of the 
smaller animals, the cultivation of vegetables, flax and 
corn, the use of the distaff, the spindle, the broom, 
the fire-rake and the pitchfork. 

"In the Mother-Age the inheritance of property 
passed through the mother ; the woman gave the chil- 
dren her own name; husband and father were in the 
background — often far from individualized; the 
brother and uncle were much more important; the 
woman was the depository of custom, lore, and re- 
ligious tradition; she was, at least, the nominal head 
of the family, and she had a large influence in tribal 
affairs." 

For some years past certain progressive women 
have shown signs of a reversion to the matriarchal 
state — or shall we say a disposition to revive it? In 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 227 

spite of human progress we travel more or less in 
circles, a truth of which the present war and its re- 
versions is the most uncompromising example. 

In the married state, for instance, these women have 
retained their own name, not even being addressed 
as Mrs., that after all is a polite variation of the 
Spanish "de," which does not by any means indicate 
noble birth alone, women after marriage proudly an- 
nouncing themselves as legally possessed. For in- 
stance a girl whose name has been Elena Lopez writes 
herself after marriage Elena Lopez de Morena, the 
"de" in this case standing for "property of." It will 
be some time before the women of Spain travel far on 
the Northern road toward pride in sex deliverance, 
but with us, and in Britain, the custom is growing 
prevalent. 

Then there is the hyphen marriage, more common 
still, in which the woman retains her own name, but 
condescends to annex the man's. Once in a way a 
man will prefix his wife's name to his own, and there 
is one on record who prefixed his own to his wife's. 
But any woman may have her opinion of him. 

So far as I have been able to ascertain these mar- 
riages are quite as successful as the average; and if 
the woman has a career on hand — and she generally 
has — she pursues it unhampered. The grandmother 
or aunt takes charge of the children, if there are any, 
while she is at her duties without the home, and so 
far, the husband has been permitted the compensation 
of endowing the children with his name. 



228 THE LIVING PRESENT 

The reversion to the prehistoric matriarchate can 
hardly be complete in these days, but there are many 
significant straws that indicate the rising of a new- 
wind blown by ancient instincts. To look upon them 
as shockingly advanced or abnormal is an evidence of 
conservatism that does not reach quite far enough into 
the past. 

A still more significant sign of the times (in the 
sense of linking past with present) is the ever-in- 
creasing number of women doctors and their success. 
Men for the most part have ceased to sneer or even to 
be more than humanly jealous, often speaking in terms 
of the warmest admiration not only of their skill but 
of their conscientiousness and power of endurance. 
When I went to live in Munich (1903) a woman sur- 
geon was just beginning to practice. This, to Ger- 
many, was an innovation with a vengeance, and the 
German male is the least tolerant of female encroach- 
ment within his historic preserves. The men prac- 
titioners threw every possible obstacle in her way, and 
with no particular finesse. But nothing could daunt 
her, and two or three years later she was riding round 
in her car — a striking red one — while the major num- 
ber of her rivals were still dependent upon the ambling 
cab-horse, directed off and on by a fat driver who 
was normally asleep. Jealousy, however, for the most 
part had merged into admiration; for your average 
male, of whatever race, is not only philosophical but 
bows to success; she was both recognized and called 
in for consultation. Hang on! Hang on! should be 



THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE 229 

the motto of all women determined to make their 
mark in what is still a man's world. Life never has 
denied her prizes to courage and persistence backed 
by ability. 

A curious instance of man's inevitable recognition 
of the places of responsibility women more and more 
are taking is in the new reading of the Income Tax 
papers for 191 7. Heretofore only married men were 
exempted taxation on the first $4000 but from now on, 
apparently, women who are also "heads of families" 
are likewise favored. As thousands of women are 
supporting their aged parents, their brothers while 
studying, their children and even their husbands, who 
for one reason or other are unequal to the family 
strain, this exemption should have been made coinci- 
dentally with the imposing of the tax. But men are 
slow to see and slower still to act where women are 
concerned. 

As we all know, women have invaded practically 
every art, trade, and industry, but — aside from the 
arts, for occasionally Nature is so impartial in her 
bestowal of genius that art is accepted as sexless — in 
no walk of life has woman been so uniformly success- 
ful as in medicine. This is highly significant in view 
of the fact that they invented and practiced it in the 
dawn of history, while man was too rudimentary to 
do anything but fight and fill the larder. It would 
seem that the biological differences between the male 
and the female which are so often the cause of 
woman's failure in many spheres preempted through- 



230 THE LIVING PRESENT 

out long centuries by man, is in her case counteracted 
not only by her ancestral inheritance, but by the high 
moral element without which no doctor or surgeon 
can long stand the exactions and strain of his terrible 
profession. No woman goes blithely into surgery or 
medicine merely to have a career or to make a living, 
although ten thousand girls to her one will essay to 
write, or paint, or clerk, or cultivate her bit of voice, 
with barely a thought expended upon her fitness or the 
obligations involved. 

But the woman who deliberately enters the profes- 
sion of healing has, almost invariably, a certain no- 
bility of mind, a lack of personal selfishness, and a 
power of devotion to the race quite unknown to the 
average woman, even the woman of genius when seek- 
ing a career. 

During the Great War there have been few women 
doctors at the Front, but hundreds of women nurses, 
and they have been as intrepid and useful as their rivals 
in sex. They alone, by their previous experience of 
human suffering, bad enough at best, were in a meas- 
ure prepared for the horrors of war and the impotence 
of men laid low. But that will not restore any lost 
illusions, for they took masculine courage for granted 
with their mothers' milk, and they cannot fail to be 
imbued to the marrow with a bitter sense of waste 
and futility, of the monstrous sacrifice of the best blood 
of their generation. 



II 

THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 



CERTAIN doctors of England have gone on 
record as predicting a lamentable physical future 
for the army of women who are at present doing the 
heavy work of men, particularly in the munition fac- 
tories. They say that the day-long tasks which involve 
incessant bending and standing and lifting of heavy 
weights will breed a terrible reaction when the war 
ends and these women are abruptly flung back into 
domestic life. There is almost no man's place in the 
industrial world that English women are not satisfac- 
torily filling, with either muscle or brains, and the 
doctors apprehend a new problem in many thousand 
neurotics or otherwise broken-down women at the 
close of the war. Although this painful result of 
women's heroism would leave just that many women 
less to compete for the remaining men sound of wind 
and limb, still, if true, it raises the acute question : 
Are women the equal of men in all things? Their 
deliverance from the old marital fetish, and successful 
invasion of so many walks of life, have made such a 
noise in the world since woman took the bit between 
her teeth, more or less en masse, that the feministic ; 

231 



232 THE LIVING PRESENT 

paean of triumph has almost smothered an occasional 
protest from those concerned with biology; but as a 
matter-of-fact statistics regarding the staying power 
of women in what for all the historic centuries have 
been regarded as avocations heaven-designed and with 
strict reference to the mental and physical equipment 
of man, are too contradictory to be of any value. 

Therefore, the result of this prolonged strain on 
a healthy woman of a Northern race evidently pre- 
destined to be as public as their present accomplish- 
ment, will be awaited with the keenest interest, and no 
doubt will have an immense effect upon the future 
status of woman. She has her supreme opportunity, 
and if her nerves are equal to her nerve, her body to 
her spirit, if the same women are working at the severe 
tasks at the end of the war as during the first months 
of their exaltation, and instead of being wrecks are 
as hardened as the miserable city boys that have be- 
come wiry in the trenches — then, beyond all question 
woman will have come to her own and it will be for 
her, not for man, to say whether or not she shall 
subside and attend to the needs of the next generation. 

Before I went to France in May 191 6 I was inclined 
to believe that only a small percentage of women 
would stand the test; but since then I have seen hun- 
dreds of women at work in the munition factories of 
France. As I have told in another chapter, they had 
then been at work for some sixteen months, and, of 
poor physique in the beginning, were now strong 
healthy animals with no sign of breakdown. They 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 233 

were more satisfactory in every way than men, for 
they went home and slept all night, drank only the 
light wines of their country, smoked less, if at all, 
and had a more natural disposition toward cleanliness. 
Their bare muscular arms looked quite capable of lay- 
ing a man prostrate if he came home and ordered 
them about, and their character and pride had de- 
veloped in proportion.* 

It is not to be imagined, however, that the younger, 
at least, of these women will cling to those greasy jobs 
when the world is normal again and its tempered 
prodigals are spending money on the elegancies of life 
once more. And if they slump back into the sedentary 
life when men are ready to take up their old burdens, 
making artificial flowers, standing all day in the fetid 
atmosphere of crowded and noisy shops, stitching ever- 
lastingly at lingerie, there, it seems to me, lies the 
danger of breakdown. The life they lead now, ardu- 
ous as it is, not only has developed their muscles, their 
lungs, the power to digest their food, but they are use- 
ful members of society on the grand scale, and to 
fall from any height is not conducive to the well-being 
of body or spirit. No doubt, when the sudden release 
comes, they will return to the lighter tasks with a 
sense of immense relief; but will it last? Will it be 
more than a momentary reaction to the habit of their 
own years and of the centuries behind, or will they 
gradually become aware (after they have rested and 

* Dr. Rosalie Morton, the leading woman doctor and surgeon of New 
York, who also studied this subject at first hand, agrees with me that 
the war tasks have improved the health of the European women. 



234 THE LIVING PRESENT 

romped and enjoyed the old life in the old fashion 
when off duty) that with the inferior task they have 
become the inferior sex again. The wife, to be sure, 
will feel something more than her husband's equal, 
and the Frenchwoman never has felt herself the in- 
ferior in the matrimonial partnership. But how about 
the wage earners? Those that made ten to fifteen 
francs a day in the U sines de Guerre, and will now 
be making four or five? How about the girls who 
cannot marry because their families are no longer in 
a position to pay the dot, without which no French 
girl dreams of marrying? These girls not only have 
been extraordinarily (for Frenchwomen of their class) 
affluent during the long period of the war, but they 
order men about, and they are further upheld with 
the thought that they are helping their beloved France 
to conquer the enemy. They live on another plane, 
and life is apt to seem very mean and commonplace 
under the old conditions. 

That these women are not masculinized is proved 
by the fact that many have borne children during the 
second year of the war, their tasks being made lighter 
until they are restored to full strength again. They 
invariably return as soon as possible, however. It 
may be, of course, that the young men and women of 
the lower bourgeoisie will forswear the dot, for it 
would be but one more old custom giving way to 
necessity. In that case the sincere, hardworking and 
not very humorous women of this class no doubt would 
find full compensation in the home, and promptly do 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 235 

her duty by the State. But I doubt if any other alter- 
native will console any but the poorest intelligence or 
the naturally indolent — and perhaps Frenchwomen, 
unless good old-fashioned butterflies, have less lazi- 
ness in their make-up than any other women under 
the sun. 

The natural volatility of the race must also be taken 
into consideration. Stoical in their substratum, bub- 
bling on the surface, it may be that these women who 
took up the burdens of men so bravely will shrug their 
shoulders and revert to pure femininity. Those past 
the age of allurement may fight like termagants for 
their lucrative jobs, their utter independence; but co- 
quetry and the joy in life, or, to put it more plainly, 
the powerful passions of the French race, may do 
more to effect an automatic and permanent return to 
the old status than any authoritative act on the part 
of man. 

11 

The women of England are (or were) far more 
neurotic than the women of France, as they have 
fewer natural outlets. And the struggle for legal en- 
franchisement, involving, as it did, a sensationalism 
that affected even the non-combatants, did much to 
enhance this tendency, and it is interesting to specu- 
late whether this war will make or finish them. Once 
more, personally, I believe it will make them, but as 
I was not able to go to London after my investiga- 
tions in France were concluded and observe for myself 



236 THE LIVING PRESENT 

I refuse to indulge in speculations. Time will show, 
and before very long. 

No doubt, however, when the greater question of 
winning the war is settled, the question of sex equality 
will rage with a new violence, perhaps in some new 
form, among such bodies of women as are not so 
subject to the thrall of sex as to desert their new 
colors. It would seem that the lot of woman is ever 
to be on the defensive. Nature handicapped her at 
the start, giving man a tremendous advantage in his 
minimum relationship to reproduction, and circum- 
stances (mainly perpetual warfare) postponed the 
development of her mental powers for centuries. Cer- 
tainly nothing in the whole history of mankind is so 
startling as the abrupt awakening of woman and her 
demand for a position in the world equal to that of 
the dominant male. 

I use the word abrupt, because in spite of the scat- 
tered instances of female prosiliency throughout his- 
tory, and the long struggle beginning in the last cen- 
tury for the vote, or the individual determination to 
strive for some more distinguished fashion of coping 
with poverty than school-teaching or boarding-house 
keeping, the concerted awakening of the sex was 
almost as abrupt as the European War. Like many 
fires it smouldered long, and then burst into a menac- 
ing conflagration. But I do not for a moment appre- 
hend that the conflagration will extinguish the com- 
plete glory of the male any more than it will cause a 
revulsion of nature in the born mother. 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 237 

But may there not be a shuffling of the cards ? Take 
the question of servant-girls for instance. Where 
there are two or more servants in a family their lot is 
far better than that of the factory girl. But it is 
quite a different matter with the maid-of -all-work, the 
household drudge, who is increasingly hard to find, 
partly because she, quite naturally, prefers the depart- 
ment store, or the factory, with its definite hours and 
better social status, partly because there is nothing in 
the "home" to offset her terrible loneliness but in- 
terminable hours of work. In England, where many 
people live in lodgings, fashionable and otherwise, and 
have all meals served in their rooms, it is a painful 
sight to see a slavey toiling up two or three flights 
of stairs — and four times a day. In the United States, 
the girls who come over from Scandinavia or Ger- 
many with roseate hopes soon lose their fresh color 
and look heavy and sullen if they find their level in 
the household where economy reigns. 

Now, why has no one ever thought of men as 
"maids" of all work? On ocean liners it is the stew- 
ards that take care of the state-rooms, and they keep 
them like wax, and make the best bed known to 
civilization. The stewardesses in heavy weather at- 
tend to the prostrate of their sex, but otherwise do 
nothing but bring the morning tea, hook up, and re- 
ceive tips. Men wait in the diningroom (as they 
do in all first-class hotels), and look out for the pas- 
sengers on deck. Not the most militant suffragette 
but would be intensely annoyed to have stewardesses 



238 THE LIVING PRESENT 

scurrying about on a heaving deck with the morning 
broth and rugs, or dancing attendance in a nauseous 
sea. 

The truth of the matter is that there is a vast 
number of men of all races who are fit to be nothing 
but servants, and are so misplaced in other positions 
where habit or vanity has put them, that they fail 
far more constantly than women. All "men" are not 
real men by any means. They are not fitted to play 
a man's part in life, and many of the things they 
attempt are far better done by strong determined 
women, who have had the necessary advantages, and 
the character to ignore the handicap of sex. 

I can conceive of a household where a well-trained 
man cooks, does the "wash," waits on the" table, 
sweeps, and if the mistress has a young child, or 
is indolent and given to the rocking-chair and a novel- 
a-day, makes the beds without a wrinkle. He may 
lack ambition and initiative, the necessary amount of 
brains to carry him to success in any of the old mas- 
culine jobs, but he inherits the thoroughness of the 
ages that have trained him, and, if sober, rides the 
heavy waves of his job like a cork. I will venture 
to say that a man thus employed would finish his work 
before eight p.m. and spend an hour or two before 
bed-time with his girl or at his club. 

Many a Jap in California does the amount of work 
I have described, and absorbs knowledge in and out 
of books during his hours of leisure. Sometimes they 
do more than I have indicated as possible for the white 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 239 

man. Energetic boys, who want to return to Japan 
as soon as possible, or, mayhap, buy a farm, make a 
hundred dollars a month by getting up at five in the 
morning to wash a certain number of stoops and sweep 
sidewalks, cook a breakfast and wash up the dinner 
dishes in one servantless household, the lunch dishes 
in another, clean up generally in another, cook the 
dinner, wait on the table, clean up in still another. 
As white men are stronger they could do even more, 
and support a wife in an intensive little flat where her 
work would be both light and spiritually remunera- 
tive. Domestic service would solve the terrible prob- 
lem of life for thousands of men, and it would 
coincidentally release thousands of girls from the fac- 
tory, the counter, and the exhausting misery of a 
"home" that never can be their own. At night he 
could feel like a householder and that he lived to some 
purpose. If he is inclined to complain that such a life 
is not "manly," let him reflect that as he is not first- 
rate anyhow, and never can compete with the fully 
equipped, he had best be philosophical and get what 
comfort out of life he can. Certainly the increased 
economic value of thousands of men, at present slav- 
ing as underpaid clerks and living in hall bedrooms, 
would thin the ranks of the most ancient of all indus- 
tries, if, according to our ardent reformers, they are 
recruited from the ranks of the lonely servant-girl, 
the tired shop-girl, and the despairing factory hand. 



24o THE LIVING PRESENT 

in 

For it is largely a question of muscle and biology. 

I have stated elsewhere that I believe in equal suf- 
frage, if only because women are the mothers of men 
and therefore their equals. But I think there are sev- 
eral times more reasons why American women at least 
should not overwork their bodies and brains and wear 
themselves out trying to be men, than why it is quite 
right and fitting they should walk up to the polls and 
cast a vote for men who more or less control their 
destinies. 

To digress a moment : When it comes to the arts, 
that is quite another matter. If a woman finds herself 
with a talent (I refrain from such a big word as 
genius, as only posterity should presume to apply that 
term to any one's differentiation from his fellows), by 
all means let her work like a man, take a man's chances, 
make every necessary sacrifice to develop this blessed 
gift; not only because it is a duty but because the re- 
wards are adequate. The artistic career, where the 
impulse is genuine, furnishes both in its rewards and 
in the exercise of the gift itself far more happiness, 
or even satisfaction, than husband, children, or home. 
The chief reason is that it is the supreme form of 
self-expression, the ego's apotheosis, the power to 
indulge in the highest order of spiritual pride, differen- 
tiation from the mass. These are brutal truths, and 
another truth is that happiness is the universal goal, 
whatever form it may take, and whatever form human 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 241 

hypocrisy may compel it to take, or even to deny. 
Scientific education has taught us not to sacrifice others 
too much in its pursuit. That branch of ancestral 
memory known as conscience has morbid reactions. 

To create, to feel something spinning out of your 
brain, which you hardly realize is there until formu- 
lated on paper, for instance; the adventurous life 
involved in the exercise of any art, with its uncertain- 
ties, its varieties, its disappointments, its mistakes; 
the fight, the exaltations, the supreme satisfactions — 
all this is the very best life has to offer. And as art 
is as impartial as a microbic disease, women do achieve, 
individually, as much as men; sometimes more. If 
their bulk has not in the past been as great, the original 
handicaps, which women in general, aided by science 
and a more enlightened public, are fast shedding, alone 
were to blame. Certainly as many women as men in 
the United States are engaged in artistic careers ; more, 
if one judged by the proportion in the magazines. 

Although I always feel that a man, owing to the 
greater freedom of his life and mental inheritances, 
has more to tell me than most women have, and I 
therefore prefer men as writers, still I see very little 
difference in the quality of their work. Often, indeed, 
the magazine fiction (in America) of the women 
shows greater care in phrase and workmanship than 
that of the men (who are hurried and harried by- 
expensive families), and often quite as much virility. 

No one ever has found life a lake. Life is a 
stormy ocean at best, and if any woman with a real 



242 THE LIVING PRESENT 

gift prefers to sink rather than struggle, or to float 
back to shore on a raft, # she deserves neither sympathy 
nor respect. Women born with that little tract in 
their brain sown by Nature with bulbs of one of the 
arts, may conquer the world as proudly as men, al- 
though not as quickly, for they rouse in disappointed 
or apprehensive men the meanest form of sex jeal- 
ousy; but if they have as much courage as talent, if 
they are willing to dedicate their lives, not their off 
hours, to the tending of their rich oasis in the general 
desert of mind, success is theirs. Biological differ- 
ences between the sexes evaporate before these im- 
personal sexless gifts (or whims or inadvertencies) of 
conservative Nature. 

Of course women have worked themselves to death 
in their passionate devotion to art. So have men. 
Women have starved to death in garrets, their fine 
efforts rejected by those that buy, and sell again to 
an uncertain public. So have men. The dreariest 
.anecdotes of England and France, so rich in letters, 
are of great men-geniuses who died young for want 
of proper nourishment or recognition, or who strug- 
gled on to middle-age in a bitterness of spirit that 
corroded their high endowment. I do not recall that 
any first-rate women writers have died for want of 
recognition, possibly because until now they have been 
few and far between. The Brontes died young, but 
mainly because they lived in the midst of a damp old 
churchyard and inherited tubercular tendencies. The 
graves and old box tombs crowd the very walls of the 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 243 

parsonage, and are so thick you hardly can walk be- 
tween them. I spent a month in the village of 
Haworth, but only one night in the village inn at the 
extreme end of the churchyard; I could read the in- 
scriptions on the tombs from my windows. 

Charlotte had immediate recognition even from such 
men as Thackeray, and if the greater Emily had to 
wait for Swinburne and posterity it was inherited con- 
sumption that carried her off in her youth. Although 
much has been made of their poverty I don't think 
they were so badly off for their times. The parson- 
age is a well-built stone house, their father had his 
salary, and the villagers told me that the three girls 
looked after the poor in hard winters, often supplying 
whole families with coal. Of course they led lives 
of a maddening monotony, but they were neither hun- 
gry nor bitter, and at least two of them developed 
a higher order of genius than was possible to the gifted 
Jane Austin in her smug life of middle-class plenty, 
and, to my mind, far more hampering restrictions. 

Even if the Brontes had been sufficiently in advance 
of their times to "light out" and seek adventure and 
development in the great world, their low state of 
health would have kept them at home. So impressed 
was I with the (to a Californian) terrible pictures of 
poverty in which the Brontes were posed by their biog- 
raphers that I grew up with the idea that one never 
could develop a gift or succeed in the higher manner 
unless one lived in a garret and half starved. I never 
had the courage to try the regimen, but so deep was 



244 THE LIVING PRESENT 

the impression that I never have been able to work 
except in austere surroundings, and I have worked 
in most abominably uncomfortable quarters with an 
equanimity that was merely the result of the death- 
less insistence of an old impression sunk deep into a 
mind then plastic. 

Let me hasten to add that many successful authors 
work in the most luxurious quarters imaginable. It is 
all a matter of temperament, or, it may be, of acci- 
dent. Moreover this outer evidence of prosperity 
makes a subtle appeal to the snobbery of the world 
and to a certain order of critic, by no means to be 
despised. Socially and in the arts we Americans are 
the least democratic of people, partly because we are 
so damnablv unsure of ourselves; and if I were be- 
ginning my career to-day I doubt if I should be so 
unbusiness-like as to take the lowly Brontes as a 
model. 

If I have digressed for a moment from the main 
theme of this book it has been not only to show what 
the influence of such brave women as the Brontes has 
been on later generations of writers, but that biology 
must doff its hat at the tomb in Haworth Church. 
Their mental virility and fecundity equalled that of 
any man that has attained an equal eminence in letters, 
and they would have died young and suffered much 
if they never had written a line. They had not a 
constitution between the four of them and they spent 
their short lives surrounded by the dust and the cor- 
ruption of death. 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 245 

IV 

But when it comes to working like men for the 
sake of independence, of avoiding marriage, of "doing 
something," that is another matter. To my mind it 
is abominable that society is so constituted that 
women are forced to work (in times of peace) for 
their bread at tasks that are far too hard for them, 
that extract the sweetness from youth, and unfit them 
physically for what the vast majority of women want 
more than anything else in life — children. If they 
deliberately prefer independence to marriage, well and 
good, but surely we are growing civilized enough 
(and this war, in itself a plunge into the dark ages, 
has in quite unintentional ways advanced civilization, 
for never in the history of the world have so many 
brains been thinking) so to arrange the social ma- 
chinery that if girls and young women are forced to 
work for their daily bread, and often the bread of. 
others, at least it shall be under conditions, including 
double shifts, that will enable them, if the oppor- 
tunity comes, as completely to enjoy all that home 
means as falls to the lot of their more fortunate sis- 
ters. Even those who launch out in life with no 
heavier need than their driving independence of 
spirit should be protected, for often they too, when 
worn in body and mind, realize that the independent 
life per se is a delusion, and that their completion as 
well as their ultimate happiness and economic security 
lies in a brood and a husband to support it. 

There used to be volumes of indignation expended 



246 THE LIVING PRESENT 

upon the American mother toiling in the home, at the 
wash-tub for hire, or trudging daily to some remun- 
erative task, while her daughters, after a fair educa- 
tion, idly flirted, and danced, and read, and finally 
married. Now, although that modus operandi sounds 
vulgar and ungrateful it is, biologically speaking, 
quite as it should be. Girls of that age should be 
tended as carefully as young plants; and, for that 
matter, it would be well if women until they have 
passed the high-water mark of ^productivity should 
be protected as much as possible from severe physical 
and mental strain. If women ever are to compete 
with men on anything like an equal basis, it is when 
they are in their middle years, when Nature's handi- 
caps are fairly outgrown, child-bearing and its inter- 
vening years of lassitude are over, as well as the recur- 
rent carboniferous wastes and relaxations. 

Why do farmers' wives look so much older than 
city women of the same age in comfortable circum- 
stances? Not, we may be sure, because of exposure 
to the elements, or even the tragic loneliness that was 
theirs before the pervasion of the automobile. Women 
in city flats are lonely enough, but although those 
that have no children or "light housekeeping" lead 
such useless lives one wonders why they were born, 
they outlast the women of the small towns by many 
years because of the minimum strain on their bodies.* 

As a matter of fact in the large cities where the 
struggle of life is superlative they outlast the men. 

*The French are far too clever to let the women in the munition fac- 
tories injure themselves. They have double, treble, and even quadruple 
shifts. 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 247 

About the time the children are grown, the husband, 
owing to the prolonged and terrific strain in com- 
peting with thousands of men as competent as himself, 
to keep his family in comfort, educate his children, 
pay the interest on his life insurance policy, often 
finds that some one of his organs is breaking down 
and preparing him for the only rest he will ever find 
time to take. Meanwhile his prospective widow (there 
is, by the way, no nation in the world so prolific of 
widows and barren of widowers as the United States) 
is preparing to embark on her new career as a club 
woman, or, if she foresees the collapse of the family 
income, of self-support. 

And in nine cases out of ten, if she has the in- 
telligence to make use of what a combination of aver- 
age abilities and experience has developed in her, she 
succeeds, and permanently; for women do not go to 
pieces between forty and fifty as they did in the 
past. They have learned too much. Work and multi- 
farious interests distract their mind, which formerly 
dwelt upon their failing youth, and when they sadly 
composed themselves in the belief that they had given 
the last of their vitality to the last of their children; 
to-day, instead of sitting down by the fireside and 
waiting to die, they enter resolutely upon their second 
youth, which is, all told, a good deal more satisfac- 
tory than the first. 

Every healthy and courageous woman's second 
vitality is stronger and more enduring than her first. 
Not only has her body, assisted by modern science, 



248 THE LIVING PRESENT 

settled down into an ordered routine that is impreg- 
nable to anything but accident, but her mind is deliv- 
ered from the hopes and fears of the early sex 
impulses which so often sicken the cleverest of the 
younger women both in body and mind, filling the 
body with lassitude and the mind either with restless 
impatience or a complete indifference to anything but 
the tarrying prince. To blame them for this would 
be much like cursing Gibraltar for not getting out of 
the way in a storm. They are the tools of the race, 
the chosen mediums of Nature for the perpetuation 
of her beloved species. But the fact remains — that 
is to say, in the vast majority of girls. There is, as 
we all know, the hard-shell division of their sex who, 
>even without a gift, infinitely prefer the single and 
independent life in their early youth, and only begin 
to show thin spots in their armor as they approach 
thirty, sometimes not until it is far too late. But if 
you will spend a few days walking through the depart- 
ment stores, for instance, of a large city and observing 
each of the young faces in turn behind the counters, 
it will be rarely that you will not feel reasonably cer- 
tain that the secret thoughts of all that vast army 
circle persistently about some man, impinging or 
potential. And wherever you make your studies, from 
excursion boats to the hour of release at the gates of 
a factory, you must draw the same conclusion that 
sex reigns, that it is the most powerful factor in life 
and will be so long as Earth at least continues to 
spin. For that reason, no matter how persistently 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 249 

girls may work because they must or starve, it is the 
competent older women, long since outgrown the 
divine nonsense of youth, who are the more satisfac- 
tory workers. Girls, unless indifferently sexed, do 
not take naturally to work in their youth. Whether 
they have the intelligence to reason or not, they know 
that they were made for a different fate and they 
resent standing behind a counter all day long or 
speeding up machinery for a few dollars a week. Even 
the highly intelligent girls who find work on news- 
papers often look as if they were at the end of their 
endurance. It is doubtful if the world ever can run 
along without the work of women but the time will 
surely come when society will be so constituted that 
no woman in the first flush of her youth will be forced 
to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and 
forfeit her birthright. If she wants to, well and 
good. No one need be deeply concerned for those 
that launch out into life because they like it. Women 
in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own 
lives ; that is the supreme privilege of democracy. But 
the victims of the propelling power of the world are 
greatly to be pitied and Society should come to their 
rescue. I know that the obvious answer to this is 
"Socialism." But before the rest of us can swallow 
Socialism it must spew out its present Socialists and 
get new ones. Socialists never open their mouths that 
they do not do their cause harm ; and whatever virtues 
their doctrine may contain we are blinded to it at 
present. This war may solve the problem. If Social- 



ISO THE LIVING PRESENT 

ism should be the inevitable outcome it would at least 
come from the top and so be suflerable. 



v 

It is all very well to do your duty by your sex and 
keep up the birth-rate, and there are compensations, no 
doubt of that, when the husband is amiable, the income 
adequate, and the children are dears and turn out well ; 
but the second life is one's very own, the duty is to 
one's self, and, such is the ineradicable selfishness of 
human nature after long years of self-denial and devo- 
tion to others, there is a distinct, if reprehensible, satis- 
faction in being quite natural and self -centered. If, 
on the other hand, circumstances are such that the 
capable middle-aged woman, instead of living entirely 
for herself, in her clubs, in her increasing interest in 
public affairs, and her chosen work, finds herself with 
certain members of her family dependent upon her, 
she also derives from this fact an enormous satisfac- 
tion, for it enables her to prove that she can fill a 
man's place in the world, be quite as equal to her job. 

Instead of breaking down, this woman, who has 
outlived the severest handicap of sex without parting 
with any of its lore, grows stronger and more poised 
every year, retaining (or regaining) her looks if she 
has the wisdom to keep her vanity alive ; while the girl 
forced to spend her days on her feet behind a counter 
(we hear of seats for these girls but we never see 
them occupied), or slave in a factory (where there is 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 251 

no change of shift as in the munition factories of the 
European countries in war time), or work from morn-, 
ing until night as a general servant — "one in help"— - 
wilts and withers, grows pasee, fanee, is liable to ulti- 
mate breakdown unless rescued by some man. 

The expenditure of energy in these girls is enor- 
mous, especially if they combine with this devitalizing 
work an indulgence in their natural desire to play. 
Rapid child-bearing would not deplete them more; 
and it is an intensely ignorant or an intensely stupid 
or, in the United States, an exceptionally sensual 
woman who has a larger family than the husband can 
keep in comfort. Moreover, unless in the depths of 
poverty, each child means a period of rest, which is 
more than the girl behind the counter gets in her entire 
working period. 

These women, forced by a faulty social structure 
to support themselves and carry heavy burdens, lack 
the intense metabolism of the male, his power to hus- 
band his stores of carbon (an organic exception which 
renders him indifferent to standing), and the superior 
quality of his muscle. Biologically men and women 
are different from crown to sole. It might be said 
that Nature fashioned man's body for warfare, and 
that if he grows soft during intervals of peace it is 
his own fault. Even so, unless in some way he has 
impaired his health, he has heretofore demonstrated 
that he can do far more work than women, and stand 
several times the strain, although his pluck may be 
no finer. 



252 THE LIVING PRESENT 

If one rejects this statement let him look about 
, among his acquaintance at the men who have toiled 
hard to achieve an independence, and whose wives 
have toiled with them, either because they lived in 
communities where it was impossible to keep servants, 
or out of a mistaken sense of economy. The man 
looks fresh and his wife elderly and wrinkled and 
shapeless, even if she has reasonable health. It is quite 
different in real cities where life on a decent income 
(or salary) can be made very easy for the woman, as 
I have just pointed out; but I have noticed that in 
small towns or on the farm, even now, when these 
scattered families are no longer isolated as in the days 
when farmers' wives committed suicide or intoxicated 
themselves on tea leaves, the woman always looks far 
older than the man if "she has done her own work" 
during all the years of her youth and maturity. If 
she renounces housekeeping in disgust occasionally and 
moves to an hotel, she soon amazes her friends by 
looking ten years younger; and if her husband makes 
enough money to move to a city large enough to 
minimize the burdens of housekeeping and offer a rea- 
sonable amount of distraction, she recovers a certain 
measure of her youth, although still far from being at 
forty or fifty what she would have been if her earlier 
years had been relieved of all but the strains which 
Nature imposes upon every woman from princess to 
peasant. 

It remains to be seen whether the extraordinary 
amount of work the European women are doing in 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 253 

the service of their country, and the marked improve- 
ment in their health and physique, marks a stride 
forward in the physical development of the sex, being 
the result of latent possibilities never drawn upon be- 
fore, or is merely the result of will power and exalta- 
tion, and bound to exhibit its definite limit as soon 
as the necessity is withdrawn. The fact, of course, 
remains that the women of the farms and lower 
classes generally in France are almost painfully plain, 
and look hard and weather-beaten long before they 
are thirty, while the higher you mount the social scale 
in your researches the more the women of France, 
possessing little orthodox beauty, manage, with a com- 
bination of style, charm, sophistication, and grooming, 
to produce the effect not only of beauty but of a 
unique standard that makes the beauties of other na- 
tions commonplace by comparison. 

Nevertheless, the fact remains that these girls and 
young women working in the Usines de Guerre, are 
better looking than they were before and shine with 
health. The whole point, I fancy, lies in the fact that 
they work under merciful masters and conditions. If 
they were used beyond their capacity they would look 
like their sisters on the farms, upon whom fathers and 
husbands have little mercy. 

When girls in good circumstances become infected 
with the microbe of violent exercise and insist upon 
walking many miles a day, besides indulging for hours 
in games which permit no rest, they look like hags. 
Temporarily, of course. When they recover their 



254 THE LIVING PRESENT 

common sense they recover their looks, for it is in 
their power to relax and recuperate. Men will walk 
twenty miles, take a cold shower, a good meal, a 
night's rest, and look as well as ever the next day — 
or at the end of the walk, for that matter. They can 
afford the waste. Women cannot. If women succeed 
in achieving hard unyielding muscles in the wrong 
place they suffer atrociously in childbirth ; for Nature, 
who is as old-fashioned and inhospitable to modern 
ideas as a Tory statesman, takes a vicious pleasure in 
punishing one sex every time it succeeds in approach- 
ing the peculiar level of the other, or which diverges 
from the normal in any way. Note how many artists, 
who are nine-tenths temperament and one-tenth male, 
suffer ; not only because they are beset with every sort 
of weakness that affects their social status, but because 
the struggle with life is too much for them unless 
they have real men behind them until their output is 
accepted by the public, and themselves with it. 

Some day Society will be civilized enough to rec- 
ognize the limitations and the helplessness of those 
who are artists first and men afterwards. But mean- 
while we can only rely upon the sympathy and the 
understanding of the individual. 

Far be it from me to advise that girls refrain from 
doing their part in the general work of the home, 
if servants are out of the question; that won't hurt 
them; but if some one must go out and support the 
family it would better be the mother or the maiden 
aunt. 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 255 

Better still, a husband, if marriage is their goal and 
children the secret desire of their hearts. 

If girls are so constituted mentally that they long 
for the independent life, self-support, self-expression, 
they will have it and without any advice from the 
worldly-wise; it is as driving an impulse as the repro- 
ductive instinct in those who are more liberally sexed. 
And these last are still in the majority, no doubt of 
that. Therefore, far better they marry and have chil- 
dren in their youth. They, above all, are the women 
whose support and protection is the natural duty of 
man, and while it is one of life's misfortunes for a 
girl to marry simply to escape life's burdens, without 
love and without the desire for children, it is by far 
the lesser evil to have the consolation of home and 
children in the general barrenness of life than to slave 
all day at an uncongenial task and go "home" to a hall 
bedroom. 

These views were so much misunderstood when 
they appeared in magazine form that I have felt ob- 
liged to emphasize the differences between the still 
primitive woman and the woman who is the product 
of the higher civilization. One young socialist, who 
looked quite strong enough to support a family, asked 
me if I did not think it better for a girl to support 
herself than to be the slave of a man's lust and bear 
innumerable children, whether she wished for them or 
not, children to whose support society contributed 
nothing. But why be a man's slave, and why have 
more children than you can support? We live in the 



256 THE LIVING PRESENT 

enlightened twentieth century, when there is precious 
little about anything that women do not know, and if 
they do not they are such hopeless fools that they 
should be in the State Institutions. The time has 
passed for women to talk of being men's slaves in any 
sense, except in the economic. There are still sweat- 
shops and there is still speeding up in factories, be- 
cause society is still far from perfect, but if a woman 
privately is a man's slave to-day it is because she is the 
slave of herself as well. 



VI 

Personally, although nothing has ever tempted me 
to marry a second time, I am very glad I married in 
my early youth, not only because matrimony enables 
a potential writer to see life from many more view- 
points than if she remains blissfully single, but because 
I was sheltered from all harsh contacts with the world. 
No one was ever less equipped by nature for do- 
mesticity and all the responsibilities of everyday life, 
and if circumstances had so ordered that I had not 
blundered into matrimony before twenty-four-or-five, 
no doubt I never should have married at all. 

But at that time — I was home on a vacation from 
boarding-school, and had had none of that illuminating 
experience known as being "out," I did no reasoning 
whatever. On the other hand I was far too mentally 
undeveloped and arrogant to be capable at that tender 
age of falling deeply in love. My future husband 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 257 

proposed six times (we were in a country house). I 
was flattered, divided between the ambition to graduate 
brilliantly and to be an author with no further loss 
of time, and wear becoming caps and trains to my 
frocks. On the other hand I wanted neither a husband 
particularly nor to go back to school, for I felt that 
as my grandfather had one of the best libraries in 
California nothing could be more pleasant or profit- 
able than to finish my education in it undisturbed. 
Nevertheless, quite abruptly I made up my mind and 
married; and, if the truth were known, my reasons 
and impulses were probably as intelligent as those of 
the average young girl who knows the world only 
through books and thinks it has little more to teach 
her. My life had been objective and sheltered. If 
forced to earn my living at sixteen no doubt the con- 
tacts impossible to escape would soon have given me a 
real maturity of judgment and I should have grown to 
love, jealously, my freedom. 

That is to say, if I had been a strong girl. As a 
matter-of-fact I was extremely delicate, with a weak 
back, a threat of tuberculosis, and very bad eyes. Most 
of this was the result of over-study, for I had been 
a healthy child, but I loved books and was indifferent 
to exercise and nourishment. No doubt if I had been 
turned out into the world to fare for myself I should 
have gone into a decline. Therefore, it was sheer luck 
that betrayed me into matrimony, for although my 
mental energies were torpid for several years my first 
child seemed to dissipate the shadows that lay in my 



258 THE LIVING PRESENT 

blood, and at twenty-five I was a normally strong 
woman. We lived in the country. My husband looked 
after the servants, and if we were without a cook for 
several days he filled her place (he had learned to 
cook "camping out" and liked nothing better) until 
my mother-in-law sent a woman from San Francisco. 
I read, strolled about the woods, storing up vitality 
but often depressed with the unutterable ennui of 
youth, and haunted with the fear that my story-telling 
faculty, which had been very pronounced, had de- 
serted me. 

When my husband died I had but one child. I left 
her with her two adoring grandmothers and fled to 
New York. I was still as callow as a boarding-school 
girl, but my saving grace was that I knew I did not 
know anything, that I never would know enough to 
write about life until I had seen more of it than was 
on exhibition in California. 

But by that time my health was established. I felt 
quite equal to writing six books a year if any one 
would publish them, besides studying life at first hand 
as persistently and deeply as the present state of 
society will permit in the case of a mere woman. For 
that reason I shall always be sorry I did not go on 
a newspaper for a year as a reporter, as there is no 
other way for a woman to see life in all its phases. I 
had a letter to Charles Dana, owner of the New York 
Sun, and no doubt he would have put me to work, but 
I was still too pampered, or too snobbish, and, lacking 
the spur of necessity, missed one of the best of educa- 



THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE 259 

tions. Now, no matter who asks my advice in regard 
to the literary career, whether she is the ambitious 
daughter of a millionaire or a girl whose talent is for 
the story and whose future depends upon herself, I 
invariably give her one piece of advice: "Go on a 
newspaper. Be a reporter. Refuse no assignment. 
Be thankful for a merciless City Editor and his blue 
pencil. But, if you feel that you have the genuine 
story-telling gift, save your money and leave at the 
end of a year, or two years at most." 

As for myself, I absorbed life as best I could, met 
people in as many walks of life as possible. As I 
would not marry again, and, in consequence, had no 
more children, nor suffered from the wearing monot- 
onies of domestic life, I have always kept my health 
and been equal to an immense amount of work. 

But the point is that I had been sheltered and pro- 
tected during my delicate years. No doubt it was a 
part of my destiny to hand on the intensely American 
qualities of body and mind I had inherited from my 
Dutch and English forefathers, as well as to do my 
share in carrying on the race. But I got rid of all 
that as quickly as possible, and struck out for that 
plane of modern civilization planted and furrowed 
and replenished by daughters of men. 



Ill 

THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 



THERE is nothing paradoxical in affirming that 
while no woman before she has reached the age 
of thirty -five or forty should, if she can avoid it, 
compete with men in work which the exigencies of 
civilization (man-made civilization) have adapted to 
him alone, still, every girl of every class, from the 
industrial straight up to the plutocratic, should be 
trained in some congenial vocation during her plastic 
years. Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate 
as it was a thousand years ago. Socialism might solve 
the problem if it were not for the Socialists. Cer- 
tainly no man or body of men has yet arisen with the 
proper amount of imagination, selflessness, brains and 
constructive genius, necessary to plan a social order 
in which all men shall work without overworking and 
support all women during the best years of the child- 
bearing and child-rearing span. If men had been 
clever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to 
protect women without independent means from the 
terrors of life, say by taxing themselves, they would 
not be pestered to-day with the demand for equal 

260 



REAL VICTIMS OF 'SOCIETY" 261 

rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of the 
remunerative industries and professions, above all by 
the return of the Matriarchate. 

It is Life that has developed the fighting instinct 
in woman, bred the mental antagonism of sex. Nature 
did not implant either. Nor has she ever wavered a 
jot from the original mix compounded in her imme- 
morial laboratory. Man is man and woman is woman 
to-day, even to the superior length of limb in the male 
(relative to the trunk) and the greater thickness of 
hairs in the woman's eyelashes. In England women of 
the leisure class showed during the years of the sports 
craze a tendency to an un feminine length of limb, 
often attaining or surpassing the male average. But 
Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis and 
weakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove 
the old sturdy yeoman into the towns and diminished 
the stature and muscular power of their descendants, 
but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed at 
the weak spot in civilization. The moment false con- 
ditions are removed she claims her own. 

Women to-day may prove themselves quite capable 
of doing, and permanently, the work of men in am- 
munition and munition factories, but it is patent that 
when human bipeds first groped their way about the 
terrifying Earth, she was not equal to the task of 
leveling forests, killing the beasts that roamed them, 
hurling spears in savage warfare, and bearing many 
children for many years. She played her part in the 
scheme of things precisely as Nature had meant she 



262 THE LIVING PRESENT 

should play it: she cooked, she soothed the warrior 
upon his return from killing of man or beast, and she 
brought up her boys to be warriors and her girls to 
serve them. There you have Nature and her original 
plan, a bald and uninteresting plan, but eminently 
practical for the mere purpose (which is all that con- 
cerns her) of keeping the world going. And so it 
would be to-day, even in the civilized core, if man had 
been clever enough to take the cue Nature flung in 
his face and kept woman where to-day he so ingenu- 
ously desires to see her, and before whose deliverance 
he is as helpless as old Nature herself. 

Man obeyed the herding instinct whose ultimate ex- 
pression was the growth of great cities, invented the 
telegraph, the cable, the school, the newspaper, the 
glittering shops, the public-lecture system ; and, volun- 
tarily or carelessly, threw open to women the gates 
of all the arts, to say nothing of the crafts. And 
all the while he not only continued to antagonize 
woman, proud and eager in her awakened faculties, 
with stupid interferences, embargoes and underhand 
thwartings, but he permitted her to struggle and die 
in the hideous contacts with life from which a small 
self-imposed tax would have saved her. Some of the 
most brilliant men the world will ever know have 
lived, and administered, and passed into history, and 
the misery of helpless women has increased from gen- 
eration to generation, while coincidentally her intel- 
ligence has waxed from resignation or perplexity 
through indignation to a grim determination. Man 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 263 

missed his chance and must take the consequences. 

Certainly, young women fulfill their primary duty 
to the race and, incidentally, do all that should be 
expected of them, in the bringing forth and rearing 
of children, making the home, and seeing to the coher- 
ence of the social groups they have organized for 
recreation or purely in the interest of the next gen- 
eration. 

Perhaps the women will solve the problem. I can 
conceive the time when there will have developed an 
enormous composite woman's brain which, combining 
superior powers of intuition and sympathy with that 
high intellectual development the modern conditions 
so generously permit, added to their increasing knowl- 
edge of and interest in the social, economic, and 
political problems, will make them a factor in the 
future development of the race, gradually bring about 
a state of real civilization which twenty generations 
of men have failed to accomplish. 

But that is not yet, and we may all be dead before its 
heyday. The questions of the moment absorb us. We 
must take them as they arise and do the best we can 
with existing conditions. The world is terribly con- 
servative. Look at the European War. 

11 

Nowhere are fortunes so insecure as in the United 
States. The phrase, "Three generations from shirt- 
sleeves to shirt-sleeves," was not coined in Europe. 



264 THE LIVING PRESENT 

But neither does it embrace a great American truth 
Many a fortune rises and falls within the span of one 
generation. Many a girl reared in luxury, or what 
passes in her class for luxury, is suddenly forced out 
into the economic world with no preparation what- 
ever. It would be interesting to gather the statistics 
of men who, with a large salary, or a fair practice, 
and indulged family, and a certain social position to 
keep up, either vaguely intend to save and invest one 
of these days — perhaps when the children are edu- 
cated — or carry a large life insurance which they 
would find too heavy a tax at the moment. 

Often, indeed, a man does insure his life, and then 
in some year of panic or depression is forced to sell 
the policy or go under. Or he insures in firms that 
fail. My father insured in three companies and all 
failed before he died. In San Francisco the "earth- 
quake clause" prevented many men from recovering 
a penny on their merchandise or investments swept 
away by the fire. Even a large number of the rich 
were embarrassed by that fire, for, having invested 
millions in Class A buildings, which were fire-proof, 
they saw no necessity for expending huge sums an- 
nually in premiums. They never thought of a general 
conflagration whose momentum would carry the flames 
across the street and into their buildings through the 
windows, eating up the interiors and leaving the fire- 
proof shell. One family lost six million dollars in 
a few hours, and emigrated to one of the Swiss lakes 
in order to be able to educate their children while 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 265 

their fortunes slowly recovered with the aid of bor- 
rowed capital. 

A large number of girls, who, without being rich, 
had led the sheltered life before the lire, were obliged 
to go to work at once. Some were clever enough to 
know what they could do and did it without loss of 
time, some were assisted, others blundered along and 
nearly starved. 

Often men who have done well and even brilliantly 
up to middle life, are not equal to the tremendous 
demand upon the vital energies of beginning life over 
again after some disastrous visitation of Nature, or a 
panic, or an ill-advised personal venture has wrecked 
their own business or that of the concern in which 
they were a highly paid cog. In the mining States 
men are dependent upon the world's demand for their 
principal product. Farmers and stock-raisers are 
often cruelly visited, strikes or hard times paralyze 
mills and factories ; and in times of panic and dry-rot 
the dealers in luxuries, including booksellers — to say 
nothing of the writers of books as well as the devotees 
of all the arts — are the first to suffer. And it is their 
women that suffer acutely, because although many of 
these men may hang on and recover, many more do 
not. They have used up their vital forces. It is not 
so much a matter of will as of physics. A woman in 
the same conditions who had been obliged to tax her 
vital organs for an equal number of years would no 
doubt have lasted as long. 

Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly 



266 THE LIVING PRESENT 

not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some 
sort of ability. The parasite type (who is growing 
rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the 
fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon 
complacent relatives or friends when deserted by for- 
tune, or drifts naturally into the half -world, always 
abundantly recruited from such as she. 

Many girls have a certain facility in the arts and 
crafts, which, with severe training, might fit them for 
a second place in the class which owes its origin to 
Heaven-born gifts. If their facility manifests itself in 
writing they could be trained at college, or even on 
the small local newspaper to write a good mechanical 
story, constructed out of popular elements and emi- 
nently suited to the popular magazine. Or they may 
fit themselves for dramatic or musical criticism, or 
advertisement writing, which pays enormously but is 
not as easy as it sounds. Or if every school (I am 
saying nothing about girls' colleges) would train their 
promising "composition" writers in reporting, their 
graduates would plant their weary feet far more 
readily than they do now when they come to a great 
city and beseech a busy editor to give them a chance. 

Almost anything can be done with the plastic mind. 
But not always. It is the better part of wisdom for 
proud parents to discover just what their offspring's 
facility amounts to before spending money on an art 
or a musical education, for instance. I had a painful 
experience, and no doubt it has been duplicated a 
thousand times, for Europe before the war was full 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 267 

of girls (many living on next to nothing) who were 
studying "art" or "voice culture," with neither the 
order of endowment nor the propelling brain-power 
to justify the sacrifice of their parents or the waste of 
their own time. 

Some years ago, finding that a young relative, who 
was just finishing her school course, drew and painted 
in water colors with quite a notable facility, and the 
family for generations having manifested talents in 
one way or another, I decided to take her abroad and 
train her faculty that she might be spared the humilia- 
tion of dependence, nor feel a natural historic inclina- 
tion to marry the first man who offered her an alterna- 
tive dependence; and at the same time be enabled to 
support herself in a wholly congenial way. I did not 
delude myself with the notion that she was a genius, 
but I thought it likely she would become apt in 
illustrating, and I knew that I could throw any amount 
of work in her way, or secure her a position in the 
art department of some magazine. 

I took her to the European city where I was then 
living and put her in the best of its art schools. To 
make a long story short, after I had expended some 
five thousand dollars on her, including traveling ex- 
penses and other incidentals, the net result was an 
elongated thumb. I was forced to the conclusion that 
she had not an atom of real talent, merely the treach- 
erous American facility. Moreover, she lost all her 
interest in "art" when it meant hard work and per- 
sistent application. I was wondering what on earth 



268 THE LIVING PRESENT 

I was to do with her when she solved the problem 
herself. She announced with unusual decision that 
she wanted to be a nurse, had always wanted to be a 
nurse (she had never mentioned the aspiration to me J 
and that nothing else interested her. Her mother had 
been an invalid; one way or another she had seen a 
good deal of illness. 

Accordingly I sent her back to this country and 
entered her, through the influence of friends, at a hos- 
pital. She graduated at the head of her class, and 
although that was three or four years ago she has 
never been idle since. She elected to take infectious 
cases, as the remuneration is higher, and although she 
is very small, with such tiny hands and feet that while 
abroad her gloves and boots had to be made to order, 
no doubt she has so trained her body that the strains 
in nursing fall upon no particular member. 

In that case I paid for my own mistake, and she 
found her level in ample time, which is as it should 
be. Of what use is experience if you are to be misled 
by family vanity? As she is pretty and quite mad 
about children, no doubt she will marry ; but the point 
is that she can wait; or, later, if the man should prove 
inadequate, she can once more support herself, and 
with enthusiasm, for she loves the work. 

To be a nurse is no bed of roses ; but neither is any- 
thing else. To be dependent in the present stage of 
civilization is worse, and nothing real is accomplished 
in life without work and its accompaniment of hard 
knocks. Nursing is not only a natural vocation for 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 269 

a woman, but an occupation which increases her matri- 
monial chances about eighty per cent. Nor is it as 
arduous after the first year's training is over as certain 
other methods of wresting a livelihood from an unwill- 
ing world — reporting, for instance. It is true that only 
the fit survive the first year's ordeal, but on the other 
hand few girls are so foolish as to choose the nursing 
career who do not feel within themselves a certain 
stolid vitality. After graduation from the hospital 
course their future depends upon themselves. Doctors 
soon discover the most desirable among the new re- 
cruits, others find permanent places in hospitals; and, 
it may be added, the success of these young women 
depends upon a quality quite apart from mere skill — 
personality. In the spring of 191 5 I was in a hospital 
and there was one nurse I would not have in the 
room. I was told that she was one of the most 
valuable nurses on the staff, but that was nothing 
to me. 

I could not see that any of the nurses in this large 
hospital was overworked. All looked healthy and con- 
tented. My own "night special," save when I had a 
temperature and demanded ice, slept from the time 
she prepared me for the night until she rose to pre- 
pare me for the day, with the exception of the eleven 
o'clock supper which she shared with the hospital 
staff. Being very pretty and quite charming she will 
marry, no doubt, although she refuses to nurse men. 
But there are always the visiting doctors, the internes, 
and the unattached men in households, where in the 



270 THE LIVING PRESENT 

most seductive of all garbs, she remains for weeks at 
a time. 

In fact nearly all nurses are pretty. I wonder 
why? 

The hospital nurses during the day arrived at inter- 
vals to take my temperature, give me detestable nour- 
ishment, or bring me flowers or a telephone message. 
It certainly never occurred to me to pity any of them, 
and when they lingered to talk they entertained me 
with pleasant pictures of their days off. They struck 
me as being able to enjoy life very keenly, possibly 
because of being in a position to appreciate its con- 
trasts. 

I know the daughter of a wealthy and historic 
family, whose head — he is precisely the type of the 
elderly, cold-blooded, self-righteous, self-conscious 
New York aristocrat of the stage — will not permit her 
to gratify her desire to write for publication, "for/' 
saith he, "I do not wish to see my honored name on 
the back of works of fiction." 

I do not think, myself, that he has deprived the 
world of one more author, for if she had fiction in 
her brain-cells no parental dictum could keep it con- 
fined within the walls of her skull; but the point is 
that being a young woman of considerable energy and 
mental activity, she found mere society unendurable 
and finally persuaded her father to make her one of 
his secretaries. She learned not only stenography and 
typewriting but telegraphy. There is a private appar- 
atus in their Newport home for her father's con- 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 271 

fidential work, and this she manipulates with the skill 
of a professional. If the fortunes of her family should 
go to pieces, she could find a position and support 
herself without the dismal and health-racking transi- 
tion which is the fate of so many unfortunate girls 
suddenly bereft and wholly unprepared. 



in 

The snobbishness of this old gentleman is by no 
means a prerogative of New York's "old families." 
One finds it in every class of American men above the 
industrial. In Honore Willsie's novel, Lydia of the 
Pines, an American novel of positive value, the father 
was a day laborer, as a matter of a fact (although of 
good old New England farming stock), earning a 
dollar and a half a day, and constantly bemoaning the 
fact; yet when "young Lydia," who was obliged to 
dress like a scarecrow, wished to earn her own pin- 
money by making fudge he objected violently. The 
itching pride of the American male deprives him of 
many comforts and sometimes of honor and freedom, 
because he will not let his wife use her abilities and 
her spare time. He will steal or embezzle rather than 
have the world look on while "his" wife ekes out the 
family income. The determined Frenchwomen have 
had their men in training for generations, and the 
wife is the business partner straight up to the haute 
bourgeoisie; but the American woman, for all her 
boasted tyranny over the busy male of her land, is 



272 THE LIVING PRESENT 

either an expensive toy or a mere household drudge, 
until years and experience give her freedom of spirit. 
This war will do more to liberate her than that mild 
social earthquake called the suffrage movement. The 
rich women are working so hard that not only do 
they dress and entertain far less than formerly but 
their husbands are growing quite accustomed to their 
separate prominence and publicly admitted usefulness. 
The same may be said of groups of women in less 
conspicuous classes, and when the war is over it is safe 
to say these women will continue to do as they please. 
There is something insidiously fascinating in work to 
women that never have worked, not so much in the 
publicity it may give but in the sense of mental ex- 
pansion; and, in the instance of war, the passion of 
usefulness, the sense of dedication to a high cause, the 
necessary frequent suppression of self, stamp the soul 
with an impress that never can be obliterated. That 
these women engaged in good works often quarrel 
like angry cats, or fight for their relief organization as 
a lioness would fight for her hungry cub, is beside the 
point. That is merely another way of admitting they 
are human beings; not necessarily women, but just 
human beings. As it was in the beginning, is now, etc. 
Far better let loose their angry passions in behalf of 
the men who are fighting to save the world from a 
reversion to barbarism, than rowing their dressmakers, 
glaring across the bridge table, and having their blood 
poisoned by eternal jealousy over some man. 

And if it will hasten the emancipation of the Amer- 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 273 

ican man from the thralldom of snobbery still another 
barrier will go down in the path of the average woman. 
Just consider for a moment how many men are fail- 
ures. They struggle along until forty or forty-five 
"on their own," although fitted by nature to be clerks 
and no more, striving desperately to keep up appear- 
ances — for the sake of their own pride, for the sake 
of their families, even for the sake of being "looked 
up to" by their wife and observant offspring. But 
without real hope, because without real ability (they 
soon, unless fools, outlive the illusions of youth when 
the conquest of fortune was a matter of course) al- 
ways in debt, and doomed to defeat. 

How many women have said to me — women in their 
thirties or early forties, and with two or three children 
of increasing demands: "Oh, if I could help! How 
unjust of parents not to train girls to do something 
they can fall back on. I want to go to work myself 
and insure my children a good education and a start 
in the world, but what can I do? If I had been 
specialized in any one thing I'd use it now whether 
my husband liked it or not. But although I have 
plenty of energy and courage and feel that I could 
succeed in almost anything I haven't the least idea how 
to go about it." 

If a woman's husband collapses into death or desue- 
tude while her children are young, it certainly is the 
bounden duty of some member of her family to sup- 
port her until her children are old enough to go to 
school, for no one can take her place in the home be- 



274 THE LIVING PRESENT 

fore that period. Moreover, her mind should be as 
free of anxiety as her body of strain. But what a 
ghastly reflection upon civilization it is when she is 
obliged to stand on her feet all day in a shop or fac- 
tory, or make tempting edibles for some Woman's 
Exchange, because she cannot afford to spend time 
upon a belated training that might admit her lucra- 
tively to one of the professions or business industries. 

The childless woman solves the problem with com- 
parative ease. She invariably shows more energy and 
decision, provided, of course, these qualities have been 
latent within her. 

Nevertheless, it is often extraordinary just what she 
does do. For instance I knew a family of girls upon 
whose college education an immense sum had been 
expended, and whose intellectual arrogance I never 
have seen equalled. When their father failed and 
died, leaving not so much as a small life insurance, 
what did they do? Teach? Write? Edit? Become 
some rich and ignorant man's secretary? Not a bit 
of it. They cooked. Always noted in their palmy 
days for their "table," and addicted to relieving the 
travail of intellect with the sedative of the homeliest 
of the minor arts, they began on preserves for the 
Woman's Exchange; and half the rich women in 
town were up at their house day after day stirring 
molten masses in a huge pot on a red-hot range. 

It was sometime before they were taken seriously, 
and, particularly after the enthusiasm of their friends 
waned, there was a time of hard anxious struggle. 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 275 

But they were robust and determined, and in time 
they launched out as caterers and worked up a first- 
class business. They took their confections to the 
rear entrances of their friends' houses on festive occa- 
sions and accepted both pay and tips with lively grati- 
tude. They educated their younger brothers and lost 
their arrogance. They never lost their friends. 

Owing to dishonest fiction the impression prevails 
throughout the world that "Society" is heartless and 
that the rich and well-to-do drop their friends the mo- 
ment financial reverses force them either to reduce 
their scale of living far below the standard, or go to 
work. When that happens it is the fault of the re- 
versed, not of the entrenched. False pride, constant 
whining, or insupportable irritabilities gradually force 
them into a dreary class apart. If anything, people 
of wealth and secure position take a pride in standing 
by their old friends (their "own sort"), in showing 
themselves above all the means sins of which fiction 
and the stage have accused them, and in lending what 
assistance they can. Even when the head of the 
family has disgraced himself and either blown out his 
brains or gone to prison, it depends entirely upon the 
personalities of his women whether or not they retain 
their friends. In fact any observant student of life 
is reminded daily that one's real position in the world 
depends upon personality, more particularly if backed 
by character. Certainly it is nine-tenths of the battle 
for struggling women. 

Another woman whom I always had looked upon 



276 THE LIVING PRESENT 

as a charming butterfly, but who, no doubt, had long 
shown her native shrewdness and determination in the 
home, stepped into her husband's shoes when he col- 
lapsed from strain, abetted by drink, and now com- 
petes in the insurance business with the best of the 
men. But she had borne the last of her children and 
she has perfect health. 

Galsworthy's play, The Fugitive, may not have been 
good drama but it had the virtue of provoking thought 
after one had left the theater. More than ever it 
convinced me, at least, that the women of means and 
leisure with sociological leanings should let the work- 
ing girl take care of herself for a time and devote 
their attention to the far more hopeless problem of 
the lady suddenly thrown upon her own resources. 

No doubt this problem will have ceased to exist 
twenty years hence. Every girl, rich or poor, and 
all grades between, will have specialized during her 
plastic years on something to be used as a resource; 
but at present there are thousands of young women 
who find the man they married in ignorance an im- 
possible person to live with and yet linger on in 
wretched bondage because what little they know of 
social conditions terrifies them. If they are pretty 
they fear other men as much as they fear their own 
husbands, and for all the "jobs" open to unspecialized 
women, they seem to be preeminently unfitted. If the 
rich women of every large city would build a great 
college in which every sort of trade and profession 
could be taught, from nursing to stenography, from 



REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY" 277 

retouching photographs to the study of law, while the 
applicant, after her sincerity had been established, was 
kept in comfort and ease of mind, with the under- 
standing that she should repay her indebtedness in 
weekly installments after the college had launched her 
into the world, we should have no more such gh'astly 
plays as The Fugitive or hideous sociological tracts as 
A Bed of Roses. 



IV 
ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM 



THE world is willing and eager to buy what it 
wants. If you have goods to sell you soon find 
your place at the counter, unless owing to some fault 
of character your fellow barterers and their patrons 
will have none of you. Of course there is always the 
meanest of all passions, jealousy, waiting to thwart 
you at every turn, but no woman with a modicum of 
any one of those wares the world wants and must 
have need fear any enemy but her own loss of courage. 

The pity is that so many women with no particular 
gift and only minor energies are thrust into the eco- 
nomic world without either natural or deliberate 
equipment. All that saves them in nine cases out of 
ten is conserved energies, and if they are thrust out 
too young they are doubly at a disadvantage. 

A good deal has been written about the fresh en- 
thusiasm of the young worker, as contrasted with the 
slackened energies and disillusioned viewpoint of 
middle life. But I think most honest employers will 
testify that a young girl worker's enthusiasm is for 
closing time, and her dreams are not so much of the 

278 



A GREAT PROBLEM 279 

higher skilfulness as of the inevitable man. Nature 
is inexorable. She means that the young things shall 
reproduce. If they will not or cannot that is not her 
fault; she is always there with the urge. Even when 
girls think they sell themselves for the adornments so 
dear to youth they are merely the victims of the race, 
driven toward the goal by devious ways. Nature, of 
course, when she fashioned the world reckoned with- 
out science. I sometimes suspect her of being of 
German origin, for so methodical and mechanical is 
her kultur that she will go on repeating "two and 
two make four" until the final cataclysm. 

I think that American women are beginning to 
realize that American men are played out at forty-five ; 
or fifty, at the most. There are exceptions, of course, 
but with the vast majority the strain is too great and 
the rewards are too small. They cannot retire in time. 
I have a friend who, after a brilliant and active career, 
has withdrawn to the communion of nature and be- 
come a philosopher. He insists that all men should 
be retired by law at forty-five and condemned to 
spend the rest of their days tilling the soil gratis for 
women and the rising generation. The outdoor life 
would restore a measure of their dissipated vitality 
and prolong their lives. 

This may come to pass in time : stranger things have 
happened. But, as I remarked before, it is the present 
we have to consider. It seems to me it would be a 
good idea if every woman who is both protected and 
untrained but whose husband is approaching forty 



280 THE LIVING PRESENT 

should, if not financially independent, begin seriously 
to think of fitting herself for self-support. The time 
to prepare for possible disaster is not after the torpedo 
has struck the ship. 

A thousand avenues are open to women, and fresh 
ones open yearly. She can prepare secretly, or try her 
hand at first one and then another (if she begins by 
being indeterminate) of such congenial occupations as 
are open to women of her class, beyond cooking, teach- 
ing, clerking. Those engaged in reforms, economic 
improvements, church work, and above all, to-day, war 
relief work, should not be long discovering their 
natural bent as well as its marketable value, and the 
particular rung of the ladder upon which to start. 

Many women whose energies have long been ab- 
sorbed by the home are capable of flying leaps. These 
women still in their thirties, far from neglecting their 
children when looking beyond the home, are merely 
ensuring their proper nourishment and education. 

Why do not some of the public spirited women, 
whose own fortunes are secure, form bureaus where 
all sorts of women, apprehensive of the future, may 
be examined, advised, steered on their way? In this 
they would merely be taking a leaf from the present 
volume of French history its women are writing. It is 
the women of independent means over there who have 
devised so many methods by which widows and girls 
and older spinsters tossed about in the breakers of 
war may support themselves and those dependent upon 
them. There is Mile. Thompson's ficole Feminine, for 



A GREAT PROBLEM 281 

instance, and Madame Goujon's hundred and one prac- 
tical schemes which I will not reiterate here. 

Women of the industrial class in the United States 
need new laws, but little advice how to support them- 
selves. They fall into their natural place almost auto- 
matically, for they are the creatures of circumstances, 
which are set in motion early enough to determine 
their fate. If they do hesitate their minds are quickly 
made up for them by either their parents or their 
social unit. The great problem to-day is for the 
women of education, fastidiousness, a certain degree 
of ease, threatened with a loss of that male support 
upon which ancient custom bred them to rely. Their 
children will be specialized ; they will see to that. But 
their own problem is acute and it behooves trained and 
successful women to take it up, unless the war lasts so 
long that every woman will find her place as inevitably 
as the working girl. 

11 

For a long time to come women will be forced to 
leave the administering of the nation as well as of 
states and cities to men, for men are still too strong 
for them. The only sort of women that men will 
spontaneously boost into public life are pretty, bright, 
womanly, spineless creatures who may be trusted to 
set the cause of woman back a few years at least, 
and gratify their own sense of humorous superiority. 

Women would save themselves much waste of 
energy and many humiliations if they would devote 



282 THE LIVING PRESENT 

themselves exclusively to helping and training their 
own sex. Thousands are at work on the problems of 
higher wage and shorter hours for women of the in- 
dustrial class, but this problem of the carefully 
nurtured, wholly untrained, and insecurely protected 
woman they have so far ignored. To my mind this 
demands the first consideration and the application of 
composite woman's highest intelligence. The indus- 
trial woman has been trained to work, she learns as 
she grows to maturity to protect herself and fight her 
own battles, and in nine cases out of ten she resents 
the interference of the leisure class in her affairs as 
much as she would charity. The leaders of every 
class should be its own strong spirits. And the term 
"class consciousness" was not invented by fashionable 
society. 

There is another problem that women, forced im- 
minently or prospectively to support themselves, must 
face before long, and that is the heavy immigration 
from Europe. Of course some of those competent 
women over there will keep the men's jobs they hold 
now, and among the widows and the fatherless there 
will be a large number of clerks and agriculturists. 
But many reformes will be able to fill those positions 
satisfactorily, and, when sentiment has subsided, 
young women at least (who are also excellent work- 
ers) will begin to think of husbands; and, unless the 
war goes on for many years and reduces our always 
available crop, American girls of the working class 
will have to look to their laurels both ways. 



A GREAT PROBLEM 283 

in 

Here is the reverse of the picture, which possibly 
may save the too prosperous and tempting United 
States from what in the end could not fail to be a 
further demoralization of her ancient ideals and 
depletion of the old American stock : 

No matter how many men are killed in a war there 
are more males when peace is declared than the dead 
and blasted, unless starvation literally has sent the 
young folks back to the earth. During any war chil- 
dren grow up, and even in a war of three years' dura- 
tion it is estimated that as against four million males 
killed there will be six million young males to carry 
on the race as well as its commerce and industries. 
For the business of the nation and high finance there 
are the men whose age saved them from the dangers 
of the battlefield. 

There will therefore be many million marriageable 
men in Europe if the war ends in 19 17. But they will, 
for the most part, be of a very tender age indeed, and 
normal young women between twenty and thirty do 
not like spring chickens. They are beloved only by 
idealess girls of their own age, by a certain type of 
young women who are alluded to slightingly as "crazy 
about boys," possibly either because men of mature 
years find them uninteresting or because of a certain 
vampire quality in their natures, and by blasee elderly 
women who generally foot the bills. 

Dr. Talcott Williams pointed out to me not long 



284 THE LIVING PRESENT 

since that after all great wars, and notably after our 
own Civil War, there has been a notable increase in 
the number of marriages in which the preponderance 
of years was on the wrong side. Also that it was not 
until after our own war that the heroine of fiction 
began to reverse the immemorial procedure and marry 
a man her inferior in years. In other words, any- 
thing she could get. This would almost argue that 
fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist. 

It is quite true that young men coming to maturity 
during majestic periods of the world's history are not 
likely to have the callow brains and petty ideals which 
distinguished the average youth of peace. Even boys 
of fourteen these days talk intelligently of the war and 
the future. They read the newspapers, even subscrib- 
ing for one if at a boarding-school. In the best of the 
American universities the men have been alive 
to the war from the first, and a large proportion of the 
young Americans who have done gallant service with 
the American Ambulance Corps had recently gradu- 
ated when the war broke out. Others are serving dur- 
ing vacations, and are difficult to lure back to their 
studies. 

Some of the young Europeans of eighteen or twenty 
will come home from the trenches when peace is de- 
clared, and beyond a doubt will compel the love if 
not the respect of damsels of twenty-five and upward. 
But will they care whether they fascinate spinsters of 
twenty-five and upward, or not? The fact is not to 
be overlooked that there will be as many young girls 



A GREAT PROBLEM 285 

as youths, and as these girls also have matured during 
their long apprenticeship to sorrow and duty, it is not 
to be imagined they will fail to interest young warriors 
of their own age — nor fail to battle for their rights 
with every device known to the sex. 

Temperament must be taken into consideration, of 
course, and a certain percentage of men and women 
of unbalanced ages will be drawn together. That 
happens in times of peace. Moreover it is likely that 
a large number of young Germans in this country 
either will conceive it their duty to return to Ger- 
many and marry there or import the forlorn in large 
numbers. If they have already taken to themselves 
American wives it is on the cards that they will re- 
nounce them also. There is nothing a German cannot 
be made to believe is his duty to the Fatherland, and 
he was brought up not to think. But if monarchy 
falls in Germany, and a republic, socialistic or merely 
democratic, rises on the ruins, then it is more than 
likely that the superfluous women will be encouraged 
to transfer themselves and their maidenly dreams to 
the great dumping-ground of the world. 

Unless we legislate meanwhile. 



V 

FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 

^^HERE are four other ways in which women 
(exclusive of the artist class) are enjoying 
remunerative careers : as social secretaries, play 
brokers, librarians, and editors; and it seems to me 
that I cannot do better than to drop generalities in 
this final chapter and give four of the most notable 
instances in which women have "made good" in these 
highly distinctive professions. I have selected four 
whom I happen to know well enough to portray at 
length : Maria de Barril, Alice Kauser, Belle da Costa 
Greene, and Honore Willsie. It is true that Mrs. 
Willsie, being a novelist, belongs to the artist class, 
but she is also an editor, which to my mind makes her 
success in both spheres the more remarkable. To edit 
means hours daily of routine, details, contacts, me- 
chanical work, business, that would drive most writers 
of fiction quite mad. But Mrs. Willsie is exceptionally 
well balanced. 

I 

Maria De Barril 

A limited number of young women thrown abruptly 
upon their own resources become social secretaries if 

286 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 287 

their own social positions have insensibly prepared 
them for the position, and if they live in a city large 
enough to warrant this fancy but by no means inac- 
tive post. In Washington they are much in demand 
by Senators' and Congressmen's wives suddenly trans- 
lated from a small town where the banker's lady hob- 
nobbed with the prosperous undertaker's family, to a 
city where the laws of social precedence are as rigid 
as at the court of the Hapsburgs and a good deal 
more complicated. But these young women must 
themselves have lived in Washington for many years, 
or they will be forced to divide their salary with a 
native assistant. 

The most famous social secretary in the United 
States, if not in the world, is Maria de Barril, and 
she is secretary not to one rich woman but to New 
York society itself. Her position, entirely self-made, 
is unique and secure, and well worth telling. 

Pampered for the first twenty years of her life like 
a princess and with all her blood derived from one of 
the oldest and most relaxed nations in Europe, she 
was suddenly forced to choose between sinking out 
of sight, the mere breath kept in her body, perhaps, 
on a pittance from distant relatives, or going to work. 

She did not hesitate an instant. Being of society 
she knew its needs, and although she was too young 
to look far ahead and foresee the structure which was 
to rise upon these tentative foundations, she shrewdly 
began by offering her services to certain friends often 
hopelessly bewildered with the mass of work they 



288 THE LIVING PRESENT 

were obliged to leave to incompetent secretaries and 
housekeepers. One thing led to another, as it always 
does with brave spirits, and to-day Miss de Barril has 
a position in life which, with its independence and 
freedom, she would not exchange for that of any of 
her patrons. She conducted her economic venture 
with consummate tact from the first. Owing to a 
promise made her mother, the haughtiest of old Span- 
ish dames as I remember her, she never has entered 
on business the houses of the society that employs her, 
and has retained her original social position apparently 
without effort. 

She has offices, which she calls her embassy, and 
there, with a staff of secretaries, she advises, dictates, 
revises lists, issues thousands of invitations a week 
during the season, plans entertainments for practically 
all of New York society that makes a business of 
pleasure. 

Some years ago a scion of one of those New York 
families so much written about that they have become 
almost historical, married after the death of his 
mother, and wished to introduce his bride at a dinner- 
dance in the large and ugly mansion whose portals in 
his mother's day opened only to the indisputably elect. 

The bridegroom found his mother's list, but, never 
having exercised his masculine faculties in this fashion 
before, and hazy as to whether all on that list were 
still alive or within the pale, he wrote to the social 
ambassadress asking her to come to his house on a 
certain morning and advise him. Miss de Barril re- 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 289 

plied that not even for a member of his family, devoted 
as she was to it, would she break her promise to her 
mother, and he trotted down to her without further 
parley. Moreover, she was one of the guests at the 
dinner. 

Of course it goes without saying that Miss de 
Barril has not only brains and energy, but character, 
a quite remarkably fascinating personality, and a 
thorough knowledge of the world. Many would have 
failed where she succeeded. She must have had many 
diplomatists among her ancestors, for her tact is in- 
credible, although in her case Latin subtlety never has 
degenerated into hypocrisy. No woman has more 
devoted friends. Personally I know that I should 
have thrown them all out of the window the first 
month and then retired to a cave on a mountain. She 
must have the social sense in the highest degree, com- 
bined with a real love of "the world." 

Her personal appearance may have something to do 
with her success. Descended on one side from the 
Incas of Peru, she looks like a Spanish grandee, and 
is known variously to her friends as "Inca," "Queen," 
and "Dona Maria" — my own name for her. When 
I knew her first she found it far too much of an 
effort to pull on her stockings and was as haughty and 
arrogant a* young girl as was to be found in the then 
cold and stately city of New York. She looks as 
haughty as ever because it is difficult for a Spaniard 
of her blood to look otherwise; but her manners are 
now as charming as her manner is imposing; and if 



2QO THE LIVING PRESENT 

the bottom suddenly fell out of Society her developed 
force of character would steer her straight into an- 
other lucrative position with no disastrous loss of 
time. 

It remains to be pointed out that she would have 
failed in this particular sphere if New York Society 
had been as callous and devoid of loyalty even in 
those days, as the novel of fashion has won its little 
success by depicting it. The most socially eminent of 
her friends were those that helped her from the first, 
and with them she is as intimate as ever to-day. 

ii 
Alice Berta Josephine Kauser 

Credit must be given to Elisabeth Marbury for in- 
venting the now flourishing and even over-crowded 
business of play broker; but as she was of a strongly 
masculine character and as surrounded by friends as 
Miss de Barril, her success is neither as remarkable 
nor as interesting as that of Alice Kauser, who has 
won the top place in this business in a great city to 
which she came poor and a stranger. 

Not that she had grown up in the idea that she 
must make her own way in the world. Far from it. 
It is for that reason I have selected her as another 
example of what a girl may accomplish if she have 
character and grit backed up with a thorough intel- 
lectual training. For, it must never be forgotten, 
unless one is a genius it is impossible to enter the first 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 291 

ranks of the world's workers without a good educa- 
tion and some experience of the world. Parents that 
realize this find no sacrifice too great to give their 
children the most essential of all starts in life. But 
the extraordinary thing in the United States of 
America is how comparatively few parents do realize 
it. Moreover, how many are weak enough, even 
when with a reasonable amount of self-sacrifice they 
could send their children through college, to yield to 
the natural desire of youth to "get out and hustle." 

Miss Kauser was born in Buda Pest, in the United 
States Consular Agency, for her father, although a 
Hungarian, was Consular Agent. It was an intel- 
lectual family and on her mother's side musically 
gifted. Miss Kauser's aunt, Etelka Gerster, when she 
came to this country as a prima donna had a brief but 
brilliant career, and the music-loving public pros- 
trated itself. But her wonderful voice was a fragile 
coloratura, and her first baby demolished it. Berta 
Gerster, Miss Kauser's mother, was almost equally re- 
nowned for a while in Europe. 

Mr. Kauser himself was a pupil of Abel Blouet at 
the Beaux Arts, but he fought in the Revolution of 
1848 in Hungary, and later with Garibaldi in the 
Hungarian Legion in Italy. 

Miss Kauser, who must have been born well after 
these stirring events, was educated by French gov- 
ernesses and Polish tutors. Her friends tell the story 
of her that she grew up with the determination to be 
the most beautiful woman in the world, and when she 



292 THE LIVING PRESENT 

realized that, although handsome and imposing, she 
was not a great beauty according to accepted stand- 
ards, she philosophically buried this callow ambition 
and announced, "Very well ; I shall be the most intel- 
lectual woman in the world." 

There are no scales by which to make tests of these 
delicate degrees of the human mind, even in the case 
of authors who put forth four books a year, but there 
is no question that Miss Kauser is a highly accom- 
plished woman, with a deep knowledge of the litera- 
ture of many lands, a passionate feeling for style, and 
a fine judgment that is the result of years of hard 
intellectual work and an equally profound study of 
the world. And who shall say that the wild ambitions 
of her extreme youth did not play their part in mak- 
ing her what she is to-day? I have heard "ambition" 
sneered at all my life, but never by any one who pos- 
sessed the attribute itself, or the imaginative power to 
appreciate what ambition has meant in the progress 
of the world. 

Miss Kauser studied for two years at the ficole 
Monceau in Paris, although she had been her father's 
housekeeper and a mother to the younger children 
since the age of twelve. Both in Paris and Buda Pest 
she was in constant association with friends of her 
father, who developed her intellectual breadth. 

Financial reverses brought the family to America 
and they settled in Pensacola, Florida. Here Miss 
Kauser thought it was high time to put her accomplish- 
ments to some use and help out the family exchequer. 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 293 

She began almost at once to teach French and music. 
When her brothers were older she made up her mind 
to seek her fortune in New York and arrived with 
a letter or two. For several months she taught music 
and literature in private families. Then Mary Bisland 
introduced her to Miss Marbury, where she attended 
to the French correspondence of the office for a year. 

But these means of livelihood were mere makeshifts. 
Ambitious, imperious, and able, it was not in her to 
work for others for any great length of time. As 
soon as she felt that she "knew the ropes'' in New 
York she told certain friends she had made that she 
wished to go into the play brokerage business for her- 
self. As she inspires confidence — this is one of her 
assets — her friends staked her, and she opened her 
office with the intention of promoting American plays 
only. Her trained mind rapidly adapted itself to busi- 
ness and in the course of a few years she was handling 
the plays of many of the leading dramatists for a 
proportionate number of leading producers. When the 
war broke out, so successful was she that she had a 
house of her own in the East Thirties, furnished with 
the beautiful things she had collected during her 
yearly visits to Europe — for long since she had opened 
offices in Paris and London, her business outgrowing 
its first local standard. 

The war hit her very hard. She had but recently 
left the hospital after a severe operation, which had 
followed several years of precarious health. She was 
quite a year reestablishing her former strength and 



294 THE LIVING PRESENT 

full capacity for work. One of the most exuberantly 
vital persons I had ever met, she looked as frail as a 
reed during that first terrible year of the war, but now 
seems to have recovered her former energies. 

There was more than the common results of an 
operation to exasperate her nerves and keep her vital- 
ity at a low ebb. Some thirty of her male relatives 
were at the Front, and the whole world of the theater 
was smitten with a series of disastrous blows. Sixteen 
plays on the road failed in one day, expensive plays 
ran a week in New York. Managers went into bank- 
ruptcy. It was a time of strain and uncertainty and 
depression, and nobody suffered more than the play 
brokers. Miss Kauser as soon as the war broke out 
rented her house and went into rooms that she might 
send to Hungary all the money she could make over 
expenses, and for a year this money was increasingly 
difficult to collect, or even to make. But if she de- 
spaired no one heard of it. She hung on. By and by 
the financial tide turned for the country at large and 
she was one of the first to ride on the crest. Her 
business is now greater than ever, and her interest 
in life as keen. 

in 

Belle Da Costa Greene 

This "live wire," one of the outstanding person- 
alities in New York, despite her youth, is the anti- 
thesis of the two previous examples of successful 
women in business, inasmuch as no judge on the 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 295 

bench nor surgeon at the Front ever had a severer 
training for his profession than she. People who 
meet for the first time the young tutelar genius of Mr. 
Morgan's Library, take for granted that any girl so 
fond of society, so fashionable in dress and appoint- 
ments, and with such a comet's tail of admirers, must 
owe her position with its large salary to "pull," and 
that it is probably a sinecure anyway. 

Little they know. 

Belle Greene, who arrests even the casual if astute 
observer with her overflowing joie de vivre and im- 
presses him as having the best of times in this best 
of all possible worlds, is perhaps the "keenest on her 
job" of any girl in the city of New York. Let any 
of these superficial admirers attempt to obtain en- 
trance, if he can, to the Library, during the long hours 
of work, and with the natural masculine intention of 
clinching the favorable impression he made on the 
young lady the evening before, and he will depart in 
haste, moved to a higher admiration or cursing the 
well-known caprice of woman, according to his own 
equipment. 

For Miss Greene's determination to be one of the 
great librarians of the world took form within her 
precocious brain at the age of thirteen and it has never 
fluctuated since. Special studies during both school 
and recreation hours were pursued to the end in view : 
Latin, Greek, French, German, history — the rise and 
spread of civilization in particular, and as demon- 
strated by the Arts, Sciences, and Literature of the 



296 THE LIVING PRESENT 

world. When she had absorbed all the schools could 
give her, she took an apprenticeship in the Public 
Library system in order thoroughly to ground herself 
in the clerical and routine phases of the work. 

She took a special course in bibliography at the 
Amherst Summer Library School, and then entered 
the Princeton University Library on nominal pay at 
the foot of the ladder, and worked up through every 
department in order to perfect herself for the position 
of University Librarian. 

While at Princeton she decided to specialize in early 
printing, rare books, and historical and illuminated 
manuscripts. She studied the history of printing from 
its inception in 1445 to the present day. It was after 
she had taken up the study of manuscripts from the 
standpoint of their contents that she found that it was 
next to impossible to progress further along that line 
in this country, as at that time we had neither the ma- 
terial nor the scholars. She has often expressed the 
wish that there had been in her day a Morgan Library 
for consultation. 

When she had finished the course at Princeton she 
went abroad and studied with the recognized authori- 
ties in England and Italy. Ten years, in fact, were 
spent in unceasing application, what the college boy 
calls "grind," without which Miss Greene is convinced 
it is impossible for any one to succeed in any vocation 
or attain a distinguished position. To all demands for 
advice her answer is, "Work, work, and more work." 

She took hold of the Morgan Library in its raw 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 297 

state, when the valuable books and MSS. Mr. Morgan 
had bought at sales in Europe were still packed in 
cases; and out of that initial disorder Belle Greene, 
almost unaided, has built up one of the greatest 
libraries in the world. Soon after her installation 
she began a systematic course in Art research. She 
visited the various museums and private collections of 
this country, and got in touch with the heads of the 
different departments and their curators. She fol- 
lowed their methods until it was borne in upon her 
that most of them were antiquated and befogging, 
whereupon she began another course in Europe during 
the summer months in order to study under the ex- 
perts in the various fields of art; comparing the works 
of artists and artisans of successive periods, applying 
herself to the actual technique of painting in its many 
phases, studying the influence of the various masters 
upon their contemporaries and future disciples. 

By attending auction sales, visiting dealers con- 
stantly and all exhibitions, reading all art periodicals, 
she soon learned the commercial value of art objects. 

Thus in time she was able and with authority to 
assist Mr. Morgan in the purchase of his vast col- 
lections which embraced art in all its forms. With the 
exception of that foundation of the library which 
caused Mr. Morgan to engage her services, she has 
purchased nearly every book and manuscript it con- 
tains. 

Another branch of the collectors' art that engaged 
Miss Greene's attention was the clever forgery, a busi- 



298 THE LIVING PRESENT 

ness in itself. She even went so far as to buy more 
than one specimen, thus learning by actual handling 
and examination to distinguish the spurious from the 
real. Now she knows the difference at a glance. She 
maintains there is even a difference in the smell. Mr. 
Morgan bought nothing himself without consulting 
her; if they were on opposite sides of the world he 
used the cable. 

Naturally Miss Greene to-day enjoys the entree to 
that select and jealously guarded inner circle of au- 
thorities, who despise the amateur, but who recognize 
this American girl, who has worked as hard as a day 
laborer, as "one of them." But she maintains that if 
she had not thoroughly equipped herself in the first 
place not even the great advantages she enjoyed as 
Mr. Morgan's librarian could have given her the 
peculiar position she now enjoys, a position that is 
known to few of the people she plays about with in 
her leisure hours. 

She has adopted the mottoes of the two contempor- 
aries she has most admired: Mr. Morgan's "Onward 
and Upward" and Sarah Bernhardt's "Quand Meme." 

IV 
HONORE WlLLSIE 

Honore Willsie, who comes of fine old New Eng- 
land stock, although she looks like a Burne-Jones and 
would have made a furore in London in the Eighties, 
was brought up in the idea that an American woman 



THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED 299 

should fit herself for self-support no matter what her 
birth and conditions. Her mother, although the 
daughter of a rich man, was brought up on the same 
principles, and taught school until she married. All 
her friends, no matter how well-off, made themselves 
useful and earned money. 

Therefore, Mrs. Willsie was thoroughly imbued 
while a very young girl with the economic ideal, al- 
though her mother had planted with equal thorough- 
ness the principle that it was every woman's primary 
duty to marry and have a family. 

Mrs. Willsie was educated at Madison, Wisconsin, 
beginning with the public schools and graduating from 
the University. She married immediately after leav- 
ing college, and, encouraged by her husband, a sci- 
entist, and as hard a student as herself, she began to 
write. Her first story followed the usual course; it 
was refused by every magazine to which she sent it; 
but, undiscouraged, she rewrote it for a syndicate. For 
a year after this she used the newspapers as a sort of 
apprenticeship to literature and wrote story after 
story until she had learned the craft of "plotting." 
When she felt free in her new medium she began writ- 
ing for the better magazines ; and, compared with most 
authors, she has had little hard climbing in her upward 
course. Naturally, there were obstacles and setbacks, 
but she is not of the stuff that ten times the number 
could discourage. 

Then came the third stage. She wrote a novel. It 
was refused by many publishers in New York, but 



300 THE LIVING PRESENT 

finally accepted as a serial in the first magazine that 
had rejected it. 

This was The Heart of the Desert. After that fol- 
lowed Still Jim which established her and paved the 
way for an immediate reception for that other fine 
novel of American ideals, Lydia of the Pines. 

It was about two years ago that she was asked 
to undertake the editorship of the Delineator, and at 
first she hesitated, although the "job" appealed to her; 
she had no reason to believe that she possessed execu- 
tive ability. The owner, who had "sized her up," 
thought differently, and the event has justified him. 
She ranks to-day as one of the most successful, cour- 
ageous, and resourceful editors of woman's magazines 
in the country. The time must come, of course, when 
she no longer will be willing to give up her time to 
editorial work, now that there is a constant demand 
for the work she loves best; but the experience with 
its contacts and its mental training must always have 
its value. The remarkable part of it was that she 
could fill such a position without having served some 
sort of an apprenticeship first. Nothing but the sound 
mental training she had received at home and at col- 
lege, added to her own determined will, could have 
saved her from failure in spite of her mental gifts. 

Mrs. Willsie, like all women worth their salt, says 
that she never has felt there was the slightest dis- 
crimination made against her work by publishers or 
editors because she was a woman. 

THE END 



ADDENDUM 

Note. — Six months ago I wrote asking Madame d'Andigne to 
send me notes of her work before becoming the President of Le Bien — ■ 
Eire du BlessL She promised, but no woman in France is busier. 
The following arrived after the book was in press, so I can only 
give it verbatim. — G. A. 

At the time this gigantic struggle broke out I was in America. 
My first thought was to get to France as soon as possible. I 
sailed on August 2nd for Cherbourg but as we were pursued by- 
two German ships our course was changed and I landed in Eng- 
land. After many trials and tribulations I reached Paris. The 
next day I went to the headquarters of the French Red Cross 
and offered my services. I showed the American Red Cross 
certificate which had been given to me at the end of my services 
at Camp Meade during the Spanish-American War. As I had 
had practically little surgical experience since the course I took 
at the Rhode Island Hospital before the Spanish- American War 
I asked to take a course in modern surgery. I was told that my 
experience during that war and my Red Cross certificate was 
more than sufficient. After serious reflection I decided that I 
could render more service to France by getting in the immense 
crops that were standing in our property in the south of France 
than by nursing the wounded soldiers. Far less glorious but of 
vital importance! So off I went to the south of France. By the 
middle of October thousands of kilos of cereals and hay and over 
20,000 hectoliters of wine were ready to supply the army at the 
front. I then spent my time in various hospitals studying the 

301 



302 THE LIVING PRESENT 

up-to-date system of hospital war relief work. It was not diffi- 
cult to see the deficiencies — the means of rapidly transporting 
the wounded from the "postes de secours" to an operating table 
out of the range of cannons — in other words auto-ambulances 
— impossible to find in France at that time. So I cabled to Amer- 
ica. The first was offered by my father. It was not until Jan- 
uary that this splendid spacious motor-ambulance arrived and 
was offered immediately to the French Red Cross. Presently 
others arrived and were offered to the Service de Sante. These 
cars have never ceased to transport the wounded from the Front 
lines to hospitals in the War Zone. I heard of one in the north 
and another in the Somme. This work finished, I took up duty 
as assistant in an operating room in Paris to get my hand in. I 
next went to a military hospital at Amiens. This hospital was 
partly closed soon afterward, and, anxious to have a great deal 
of work, I went to the military hospital at Versailles. 

The work in the operating room was very absorbing, as it was 
there that that wonderful apparatus for locating a bullet by 
mathematical calculation was invented and first used. There, 
between those four white walls I have seen bullets extracted from 
the brain, the lungs, the liver, the "vesicule biliaire," etc., etc. 

From there I was called to a large military hospital at the time 
of the attack in Champagne in September, 1915. Soon I was 
asked to organize and superintend the Service of the Mussulman 
troops. At first it was hard and unsatisfactory. I spoke only a 
few words of Arabic and they spoke but little French. I had 
difficulty in overcoming the contempt that the Mussulmans have 
for women. • They were all severely wounded and horribly muti- 
lated, but the moral work was more tiring than the physical. 

However, little by little they got used to me and I to them. 
We became the best of friends and I never experienced more 
simple childlike gratitude than with these " Sidis. " I remember 
one incident worth quoting. I was suffering from a severe grippy 



ADDENDUM 303 

cold — they saw that I was tired and felt miserable. I left the 
ward for a few moments. On returning I found that they had 
pushed a bed a little to one side in a corner and had turned down 
the bed-clothes and placed a hot-water jug in it (without hot 
water). The occupant was a Moroccan as black as the ace of 
spades; he was trepanned but was allowed up a certain number 
of hours a day. "Maraan," — they all called me Maman — 
"toi blessee, toi ergut (lie down) nous tubibe (doctor) nous firrnli 
(nurse)." And this black, so-called savage, Moroccan took up 
his post beside the bed as I had often done for him. I explained 
as best as I could that I would have to have a permission signed 
by the Medecin-Chef, otherwise I would be punished; and the 
Medecin-Chef had left the hospital for the night. He shook 
his wise black head, "Maman blessee, Maman blessee!" 

One called me one day and asked me what my Allah was like. 
I told him I thought he was probably very much like his. Well! 
if my Allah was not good to me, theirs would take care of me, 
they would see to that. 

In May, 191 6, I was asked to organize a war relief work* at 
the request of the Service de Sante. This work was to provide the 
"grands blesses et malades" with light nourishing food, in other 
words, invalid food. The rules and regulations of the French 
military hospitals are not sufficiently elastic to allow the admin- 
istering of such food. In time of war it would be easier almost 
to remove Mt. Blanc than to change these rules and regulations. 
There was just one solution — private war relief work. 

So, with great regret, I bade good-bye to these children I never 
would have consented to have left had it not been for the fact 
that I knew from experience how necessary was the war relief 
work which was forced upon me, as I had seen many men die 
from want of light nourishing food. 

*Le Bien— Etre du BlessS. 



